The Thrill of the Haunt

by E. J. Copperman

  “She’s up to something,” I said.

  I hadn’t even realized Paul was listening. “Don’t make assumptions, Alison. It inhibits your development as an investigator.”

  “I’m not that concerned with my investigative development right now, Paul. I’m concerned about Everett Sandheim and the dead son he thought was talking to him, about a weird ghost in the men’s room at the Fuel Pit, about having to deal with Kerin Murphy, about Helen and Dave Boffice and who killed Joyce Kinsler, about someone writing beware messages on my house for no particular reason, and about the fact that Josh is coming over after dinner and I have to tell him something I’d rather not tell him.” That last part sort of slipped out before I could think about it, and I had no choice but to complete the sentence.

  Paul cocked an eyebrow. His eyebrows were getting a real workout today. “Really! What is it you don’t want to tell him?” Usually, Paul has issues with guys I date, but up to this point he’d been remarkably un-judgmental about Josh. If this was an opening salvo in some effort he was dreaming up to discredit Josh, he’d picked the wrong moment.

  I fixed my gaze on him the best I could; Paul is not exactly what you’d call completely there at any given moment. “I have to tell him about you and Maxie,” I said. “Because I want to prove to him that I trust him.”

  Paul’s face showed no reaction. “I think that would be an error,” he said. “The rumors about this house are best left just rumors. Even Senior Plus Tours doesn’t have any proof of us. Bringing in another person who would know that there really are people like Maxie and me here would be extraordinarily dangerous. And it would be an invasion of my privacy.”

  “Your privacy!?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Even the part I was saying. “You think me telling my boyfriend about you would make this house a tourist attraction? Newsflash, pal: This is a tourist attraction, because I need it to be! That’s incredibly selfish of you, Paul.”

  “After all we’ve built over the past year and a half, you want to risk our operation by telling a man you’ve known only a short time about us?” he shot back. “Do you realize that your emotions might be getting the best of you?”

  “Do you realize that you’re jealous of every guy I look at twice?” I countered. “That you don’t think any one of them is interested in me for myself? You think every man I meet has an ulterior motive.”

  He gave me a look.

  “Okay, so sometimes they did. That’s not the point. What I’m saying is, this is not about you.” Except that it was, at least partially, about him and Maxie.

  It’s not easy to turn on your heel and leave a ghost in your wake. For one thing, they can move through walls, so closing a door behind you doesn’t really have the same resonance as it would with someone more corporeal. For another, ghosts don’t have the disadvantage of having to travel on legs; their speed is modulated, up to a point—they can’t fly at seventy miles an hour—but they can move quicker than the living can.

  None of that mattered because of the glimpse I caught of Paul’s stunned face, and he did not follow me when I left the room.

  Twenty-three

  It was a little humiliating four seconds later when I then had to go back up the stairs, look Paul straight in the eye, and say, “Okay. Now, what was I supposed to be doing on the Joyce Kinsler case?”

  Paul being Paul, he didn’t make me suffer for my outburst. Very patiently, he answered, “You need to explore the possibility that someone other than Helen or Dave might have wanted Joyce dead. We know she didn’t kill herself, but we don’t know the motive, and we don’t know if there was an aspect of her life that might have made a difference. I’ve spoken at length to her father while you were away. There are some possibilities.”

  Which was how I ended up in Katrina Holm’s house in Spring Lake the next morning.

  Katrina was a very nice, very attractive lady in her early forties. But when I’d asked her on the phone if I could come up to talk about Joyce Kinsler, she had sounded almost offended.

  “I’m not sure why you’d ask,” she’d said. “Joyce was my friend, almost my sister. She’s dead now. I’m mourning. Can’t you get whatever information you need from someone else?”

  “I completely understand and hate to impose,” I’d answered. “But it’s entirely because you were her closest friend that you can provide the kind of insight no one else can offer.” A little flattery never hurt. “I promise it won’t take long.”

  Her voice softened a little. “Can’t we do this on the phone?”

  Paul, who could hear both sides of the conversation, shook his head. I knew he always wanted me to see the expression on the subject’s face and get a sense of the feeling in the room.

  “It would be much better if we could talk in person,” I said. “I’ll make it as convenient for you as I can. I have to be in the area anyway.” Sometimes it’s best to make the person you’re asking think they’re helping you out. I don’t know why it works, but it does.

  And so I was now sitting in Katrina’s living room, a pitcher of lemonade on the coffee table and Katrina herself on the sofa opposite me. I sat in an upholstered chair. Katrina hadn’t offered anything more than the lemonade yet, and so far I’d only asked the softest of questions. The voice recorder next to me was probably bored.

  “When you said that Joyce was like a sister to you,” I began, “well, do you have a sister?” That seemed pretty innocuous, and Paul always said to start with something easy to get the subject comfortable. In this case, I wasn’t diving right in and trying to prove anything about Katrina. I had no reason to think she’d murdered Joyce Kinsler. I had no reason to think she didn’t, either. This was a fact-finding mission.

  “No, and maybe that’s one reason Joyce and I were so close.” Katrina was already biting her lip a little; the more sensitive questions were going to be tough to ask. “Because we both needed somebody to talk to like that. I’m just now starting to realize how much I’ll be missing her for the rest of my life.”

  I avoided biting my own lip and went on. “When is the last time you heard from Joyce?” I asked Katrina.

  “Just the day before . . . it happened,” she answered after a moment. “And the thing is, she didn’t sound the least bit unusual. Just the same Joyce. We talked about American Idol, can you believe it? And then we hung up, and the next thing I knew . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “Did she mention Dave Boffice that day?” I asked Katrina.

  Katrina looked puzzled. “Why would she?” she asked.

  I didn’t know how to answer that, so I dodged. “I have to follow up on everything.”

  Katrina shook her head with an incredulous look. “No, she didn’t mention that guy. Why does it matter? They barely knew each other.”

  Well, that made perfect . . . huh? “They weren’t having a torrid affair?” I was so thrown, I was using words like torrid.

  Katrina gave me a stare best reserved for someone who tells you the world is hexagon-shaped. “No!” she said. “Joyce said he was some guy she worked with.”

  “So why mention him at all?” I asked, congratulating myself for not saying torrid again.

  “She said he used to come over once in a while and complain about his wife,” Katrina answered. “I thought that sounded weird, but Joyce told me he needed an ear, and she provided it.”

  That didn’t smell right. “Did she mention anything about his wife’s money?” I asked.

  “No. Why? Did she have some?”

  • • •

  I sat in my car and wondered about my life. But mostly, I watched the door of the office building and waited for Dave Boffice to walk out.

  I hadn’t told Paul I was going to see Dave, but it was inevitable, and here I was. I did keep the voice recorder in my tote bag, so I’d tell Paul about it later. I hadn’t called Josh. I hadn’t called Phyllis. I hadn’t even called my mother. Maxie had been absent when I’d left, which really hadn’t bothered me, but suddenly I felt
very alone.

  The police had questioned Dave (despite what his wife had told me—a call to Sprayne confirmed it) and probably gotten more out of him than I would have. But if I was going to investigate Joyce Kinsler’s death—and after her father had visited, it was a given that I would—I needed my own information. It didn’t make sense that Joyce hadn’t told her best friend, Katrina, about her relationship with Dave. Was Joyce lying to her best friend? Or had Helen truly been mistaken about Dave and Joyce’s “affair”?

  It was Saturday, but I suspected that Dave would be in his office. From Helen’s description and everything I’d witnessed, he didn’t seem to have much of a life outside of his work. Sure enough, his car was parked in his customary space, despite there being many fewer cars in the lot than usual. Dave was a serious creature of habit.

  I was right, and before too long, he appeared at the glass doors. I marveled at the idea that he would put on a suit to go to work on a Saturday. The butterflies in my stomach became hummingbirds and started flying around, which was odd. I wasn’t afraid of Dave—he was so bland he didn’t inspire fear—and had interviewed people about crimes before. I attributed the nerves to everything else that was going on in my life and got out of the Volvo to approach Dave before he could reach his car and drive away.

  He didn’t seem to notice me until I was only a few feet from him; he was reaching for the keys in his jacket pocket. “Mr. Boffice?” I began, and he turned his head to face me.

  “Yes?” he asked. Then he looked at me more closely. “You,” he said. “You’ve been following me around.”

  So much for my stealth skills.

  “Yes,” I admitted. “I want to ask you about Joyce Kinsler.”

  His expression didn’t so much react as freeze. He did not move one facial muscle, and that gave the impression of great tension. It was a little scary.

  “This is not the place,” Dave said through clenched teeth.

  “Where is the place?”

  “Follow me,” he said, opening his car door. “That should come naturally to you.”

  I had to run to my car to keep up.

  We drove to a Dunkin’ Donuts about two miles from Dave’s office. Once inside, I ordered an iced decaf (I had enough stimulation on my own right now) and eschewed the baked goods to show Dave how professional I was. It’s hard to be taken seriously when you’re eating a muffin. Dave one-upped me by not ordering anything.

  “Is that why you were following me?” he asked in a hushed voice once we had sat down at a table far from the counter. “To find out about Joyce?”

  I saw no reason to be evasive. “Yes. Your wife hired me to find out if you were having an affair.”

  Dave’s bland face showed something that incongruously looked like relief. “My wife,” he said. “You mean she hired you to confirm that I was having a relationship with another woman so that she could use it to blackmail me. Isn’t that a little closer to the truth?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Helen is the most competitive person I’ve ever met,” Dave said. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or himself. “But this is beyond the pale.”

  “You think your wife killed Joyce Kinsler so she could win?” I’d been thinking it, but I tend to discount anything I think as unhelpful to the investigation. Paul does the thinking; I do the . . . whatever this was.

  Dave looked stunned. “Helen? Kill Joyce?” He seemed to mull it over for a moment. “I wouldn’t put it past her, but I don’t think she did. I’m not sure she could handle it, physically.” It was true that Helen was a small woman, and hanging someone took considerably more upper-body strength than, for instance, shooting them.

  “Do the police think you did it?” I said. I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t want to ask Sprayne any more questions if I didn’t have to.

  Dave’s mouth flat-lined. “Probably. They think I was sleeping with Joyce, after all. They questioned me for two hours.”

  “You weren’t having an affair with Joyce Kinsler?” So what Katrina told me had been true?

  “Of course not. I take my marriage vows seriously. Helen thought what she thought, but Joyce and I were just friends.”

  “Just friends,” I repeated. It’s the declarative-sentence version of answering a question with a question. I like to mix it up.

  “Well, you were following me. Did you ever see me in a compromising position?”

  He had a point. Sort of. “I only followed you for a few lunch hours,” I said. “It’s possible I just caught the wrong days.”

  Dave’s eyes lost focus; he stopped looking at me. “A few lunch hours,” he said. Now he was doing it.

  I decided to plow on. “I agree that Helen might not have been strong enough to kill Joyce, but she has a lot of money,” I said, deciding on the spot to play that card. “Could she have paid someone to do it?”

  Dave stood abruptly and put five dollars on the table despite not having ordered anything. “I have to leave,” he said and was out the door before I could react.

  I could have followed him, I suppose, but his quick exit stunned me, and I sat there for a full minute.

  Then I picked up the five bucks and left.

  • • •

  “He ran?” Paul texted when I was back, sitting in my car—ghosts can’t be heard over the phone, but he can use a cheap phone I’d bought to text me when I was out. I’d given the Reader’s Digest version of my day, and when I said Dave Boffice had let slip that he thought his wife was morally, if not physically, capable of killing, and then fled, Paul had shown quick interest.

  “Yup,” I texted. “I feel like I’m the child of a sticky divorce. Mommy and Daddy are fighting because they each think the other one killed somebody.”

  A text came from Paul. “Talk to Sprayne.”

  As it happened, Detective Michael Sprayne had recently called me with an enticing promise of “new info” to share on the Kinsler case. I hadn’t wanted to talk to him, strictly because I’d have to hear about it from Maxie, but I realized now I had no choice.

  I put the phone back into my tote bag and walked from my car to a park bench where I’d agreed to meet him.

  I stopped to turn on the voice recorder as I entered the park. Detective Sprayne, in a T-shirt and jeans on a Saturday morning, was already on the bench in question and gestured toward me. He looked less rumpled than either time I’d seen him before. Which was weird, since the last time he was in a suit.

  “I don’t get it,” I told him, all business. “Out of the blue you call me with new information on Joyce Kinsler. Is there something you think I can tell you to help your investigation?”

  Sprayne, who was making a show of being relaxed by stretching his legs, shook his head. “I just wanted to share,” he said.

  That made no sense. A police detective sharing information with a private investigator with no obvious advantage? “You are really a cop, right?” I said. “You don’t act like other cops.”

  He grinned and sort of chuckled, more a snort. “I’ve found some stuff, and I can’t figure out what it means,” he said. “I thought if we talked about it, we might be able to make sense of it. Is that so impossible?”

  I’d never met a cop who would feel that way, and there was something about the way he was grinning that made me think he was at the very least exaggerating. But if I could find out something that might help Paul, I was game. “Okay, shoot,” I said, and immediately regretted saying that to a cop who carried an actual gun.

  “I talked to your pal Dave Boffice yesterday,” Sprayne said when I was finished. “He said everything you want a witness to say, almost had me convinced he had nothing to do with Joyce Kinsler, was just a friend of hers, went over to her house to complain about his wife.”

  Exactly what Dave had told me. “Almost had you convinced,” I echoed back, and told him what Dave had said to me. “What changed your mind?”

  I saw a ghost watching the kids at a nearby playground, like a caring grandparent seei
ng to their safety. Sprayne took a moment and answered me. “Did a few routine checks on Boffice,” he said. “Just the usual stuff, tax records, recent cell phone, employment history, that sort of thing.” I made a mental note not to get in trouble with the authorities.

  “You found something unusual?” I asked. Dave seemed such an average guy, anything out of the ordinary would be a surprise.

  “Yeah, we found something. Up to about seven years ago, there was no such person as David Boffice.” He let that sink in for a moment.

  I stopped watching the ghost and stared at Sprayne. “What does that mean?”

  “Exactly why I’m here conferring with you.”

  “No, I mean what do you mean, there was no such person as Dave Boffice seven years ago?”

  “I’m saying that he had no birth certificate, no record of attending any school, no employment history, no tax records, no phone records, no credit cards. Then all of a sudden he starts to appear on official records just a hair under seven years ago. Now, what does that mean?” Sprayne took a sip of his coffee and blinked, the first time he’d done so in a while.

  “It beats the living heck out of me,” I said. “Are you certain?”

  “The fact is, the only David Boffice I could find died seventeen years ago at the age of eight.”

  David Boffice was dead? I wondered if Paul could find him.

  Twenty-four

  “How do you track a person who didn’t exist until seven years ago?” I asked.

  Paul didn’t have time to answer, because my phone rang. I had foolishly forwarded the calls on my landline to my cell phone when I left the house that morning, and now the cell was ringing with Kerin Murphy on the other end. I considered not answering, but then Kerin would just come to the house, and that would be more than I could handle at the moment.

  “Hi, Kerin. I’ve been working the case and should have something for you soon. Nice talking to you.”