The Thrill of the Haunt

by E. J. Copperman

But she saw my ploy and raised me an indignant, “Not so fast, Alison! I’m concerned about your investigation, and I want satisfaction!”

  Satisfaction? “Are you challenging me to a duel, Kerin?” I asked.

  “Don’t be cute. You’ve been ignoring me and treating me like an annoyance since this began.” I opened the phone to speaker mode so Paul could hear the other end of the conversation. I could see Maxie’s feet and calves hanging through the ceiling, but most of her was upstairs with Melissa, who was ostensibly doing homework. As for Maxie . . . it’s hard to know what Maxie is doing at any given moment, even when you can see her doing it.

  “I don’t think I’ve been doing that,” I countered, mainly because it seemed like the kind of thing I would say if I meant it.

  “Well, you have. I’ve been monitoring your progress, and you have been spending more time on some other investigation while I’m paying you good money to solve Everett’s murder.” Paul shrugged. Since he can’t be heard over the phone, and not by Kerin under any circumstances, he could speak freely. “It’s been difficult to juggle both cases,” he admitted. “But we haven’t been ignoring Everett Sandheim. You still need to get the dimensions on that window, though.”

  I gave him an exasperated look. “I’m working both cases,” I said to Kerin. “Everett’s murder is just as high a priority, but if you feel you haven’t been getting the service you deserve . . .”

  Kerin cut me off. “Don’t tell me to take my business elsewhere again, Alison. I intend to make sure you see this through, and I want something done quickly.”

  “What is it you want done quickly?” I asked pointedly.

  “Something!” Well, that was clear. “And now that the people you’ve been following around are moving out, you should have more time to concentrate on Everett. Honestly, I don’t see how—”

  I’d been just sort of half-listening, but Paul’s eyes widened to the size of hubcaps and he pointed at the phone. “What did she just say?” he shouted.

  Maxie dropped down through the ceiling. “What’s the racket?” she demanded. “We’re trying to concentrate on Apples to Apples up here.”

  Playing a board game with a ghost when she was supposed to be doing math? My daughter had a lot to answer for. Not to mention, Maxie should have been tracking down Dave Boffice’s existence prior to seven years earlier.

  “What did you just say?” I echoed back to Kerin. “Who’s moving out?”

  “You know, the milquetoast-looking guy,” Kerin said, her tone adding an intimation that I was even a bigger idiot than she’d imagined. Paul gasped.

  “Wait a minute—how do you know what I’ve been doing?” I said.

  Kerin was very matter-of-fact. “You’ve been following that man all week!” she said. That wasn’t an answer to my question, but what she hadn’t said answered it well enough.

  “I’ve only driven past his house once. How do you know where it is?” Then it hit me. “Wait a minute—you’ve been following me?”

  “Well, someone had to make sure you were doing the work you were contracted to do,” Kerin answered. “And now you can get to it because those two won’t be in town anymore. I drove by their house to see if you were there, and I saw a big van in front of their house, loading cartons out of the garage.”

  “Call Sprayne,” Paul said quickly. “Get there now.”

  I hung up on Kerin, which was the highlight of my day.

  • • •

  Maxie insisted on coming along, and I didn’t argue. There was no point to it, and there was no time. I even had her find the directions to the Surf Drive home of the Boffices from the first time I’d used my portable GPS to get there. Maxie’s manipulation of the device must have been a treat for anyone pulling up next to my car. The idea of a GPS unit floating in space was the last thing on my mind at the moment.

  I’d left a message for Sprayne. Kerin, by the way, had called me four more times, but I had ignored the calls.

  “What does it mean if they’re moving?” Melissa asked. Yes, I took my daughter with me when confronting some potentially violent suspects. Even though Paul could certainly have kept an eye on her, and she really needed very few eyes kept on her anyway, I was more concerned that it would have appeared odd to the guests for me to leave my eleven-year-old daughter alone in the house while I stormed out on some unspecified mission. Besides, Melissa is really good at spotting the things I miss. Maxie, after programming the GPS, read a magazine in the backseat.

  “It can mean a lot of things,” I answered. “And we don’t know that they’re moving. We only know that Kerin Murphy says she saw a van loading cartons in front of their house.”

  “Right. So that means they’ve decided to keep all their stuff in boxes now?” Maxie said with an edge to her voice.

  “We’re making no assumptions until we have facts.” I could recite the Gospel of Paul with the best of them. Maxie snorted.

  “How long before we get there?” I asked Melissa, who was in charge of the GPS. A lot of people mount those things on the dashboard, but I keep mine in the cup holder in the console. It had nothing to do with the fact that the first time I’d used the dashboard thing, I’d turned the unit the wrong way and it had broken off.

  “Two more minutes,” Liss reported.

  “I hope they’re not already gone,” I said to no one in particular.

  “Too bad for you,” Maxie said as we pulled onto the Boffices’ street. If there had been a moving van in front of the house, a relatively modest McMansion type in the center of the block, it was no longer there. No movers were loading boxes. The garage door was not open and the front window had no curtains or drapes.

  It sure did look like Helen and Dave had moved out.

  There was a car in the driveway, but when I pulled up in front of the house, I deduced—trained detective that I am—that it belonged to Detective Michael Sprayne, who was already standing at the front door, scowling. His demeanor did not become the least bit brighter when, after insisting above protests that Melissa stay in the car, I got out and joined him there.

  “Your pals are minimalist decorators,” he said without looking at me.

  “You’re welcome for the tip,” I countered. “What makes them my pals, anyway? You didn’t have a unit keeping an eye on them, and now it’s my fault?”

  “Believe it or not, we don’t have a cruiser available to watch every house that has a crime suspect with no indication of flight risk living in it.” Sprayne looked through the side window next to the door. “There’s nothing inside.”

  “Newsflash,” I said.

  “I don’t have a warrant,” he mused. “I suppose I could get one.”

  “You new to this?” I saw Melissa looking at Sprayne through the car window. She did not seem impressed. Melissa is an excellent judge of character.

  Sprayne turned, finally, to scowl at me. “You know how many murders we get in Eatontown a year?” he asked.

  “None?”

  “None.”

  “So the crime rate has gone up. Anyway, you want to get into this house, right?”

  He nodded. “But I don’t have a warrant.”

  I reached over toward the door. “I don’t suppose you’ve tried the knob.” Sure enough, it turned and the door swung open.

  “Still don’t have a warrant,” Sprayne said.

  “The door was wide open. Besides, you didn’t open it; I did. You can arrest me for breaking and entering into an empty house if you feel like it.”

  “I don’t feel like it.” He walked inside, but I noticed he felt for the gun under his left arm first.

  I held up my hands, palms out, toward Melissa, telling her to stay in the car. She pouted but knew better than to disobey me on this one. Maxie wouldn’t have let her out anyway.

  Sprayne was already in the living room, gun still holstered, when I walked in. The place was, as advertised, completely empty. There were some indentations on the carpet where the furniture had stood, one or two—n
o more, certainly—scuffs on the walls (which were all painted white) and one of the many ceiling fans in the living room, kitchen, dining room and family room, which were all visible from where I stood, had some dust on its blades. That was it.

  “Welcome to generic house,” I said.

  “Does look like everything is gone,” Sprayne answered.

  “Doesn’t look like there was much here to begin with,” I noted.

  “No, you’re right. The walls are too clean, the ceiling is perfect, there’s no smell of lingering cooking. You have to wonder if anyone ever lived here at all.” He dropped his right hand to his side, no longer reaching for his weapon, and walked into the kitchen. “Look here.” He pointed to a mark on the carpet. “I’ve seen this shape before.” It was rectangular and deep, meaning a solid piece of furniture had sat there. “Grandfather clock.”

  “Fascinating. Let’s search the house.”

  I opted to take the staircase to the second level. I looked into the upstairs bath, which was exactly like one in a model home, and then walked into the master bedroom suite.

  Matthew Kinsler was floating there, looking less distraught than disappointed. “I missed them,” he said. “If I’d known, I would have gotten word to you. That gumshoe in your house would have heard me if I’d sent a message.”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  He snarled. “I came by to check on that Boffice guy. Figured I’d come here to see if the bastard would say anything about her. But he was gone by the time I got here.”

  “You think he had something to do with what happened?” I asked.

  From downstairs, I heard Sprayne call up. “Clear down here. You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I yelled back, then turned and stage whispered to Matthew. “I don’t have much time. What do you know?”

  “Nothing more than the last time I saw you,” he answered in his normal voice, which made sense. “One thing that’s weird, though. Did you notice anything about Joyce’s house?”

  I must have looked puzzled because he went on without waiting for an answer. “Every picture, every photograph in that house, is gone. Used to be everywhere,” he said. “What would someone want with her pictures?”

  “Kerby!” Sprayne insisted from the staircase.

  “Coming,” I answered him. I looked at Matthew and shrugged. I couldn’t risk talking again, so I waved at him and turned back to the stairway.

  Sprayne was standing there, weapon drawn, then saw me walking toward him and holstered his gun. “I figured someone had you at gunpoint,” he said. “What took you so long?”

  “It’s lovely you’re so concerned about my well-being,” I said. Better to change the subject. “Let me ask you something,” I said. “Did you notice anything strange about Joyce Kinsler’s house?”

  Twenty-five

  “No photographs,” Paul said. If his goatee had been real, he surely would have rubbed it off by now. His furious stroking of his own facial hair was making my chin chafe. “No photographs in the house.” It was becoming his mantra.

  “Maybe there was a treasure in one of the pictures and the person who killed her wanted to get it,” Maxie suggested. We were having our current conference in the kitchen, where my mother was expected any minute. She was going to teach Melissa how to cook lentils. I had quit cooking class, my dismal failure to be expected given that I hadn’t paid the slightest bit of attention, so I was just cleaning up the kitchen.

  “I really don’t think it’s treasure they were after, Maxie.” Melissa, who is always patient with everyone (having learned that from being patient with me), had no trace of irony in her voice. “Besides, why would they take all the pictures?”

  “Exactly,” Paul agreed before I could be sarcastic. “And Matthew said there used to be a lot of them, right, Alison?”

  “That’s what he told me. He said there were family photos and pictures of Joyce with friends everywhere. She never married, so maybe she liked to have pictures around to feel like other people were there.”

  Paul stroked even harder, if such a thing were possible. “The Boffices moved out of their house, and Joyce’s photographs are missing,” he said. He was clearly thinking out loud because he didn’t look directly at any of us. “There has to be a connection.”

  “If we knew the name of the moving van company, maybe Sprayne could find out where the Boffices’ stuff was going,” I suggested. “Should I go back and check with some of the neighbors?”

  Paul looked at me with the pride of a teacher whose student just mastered a basic algebra equation. “That’s very good!” he said. “But you could ask the one person we know who saw the moving van . . .”

  Oh no. “Kerin Murphy?” I said. “Do I really have to go and ask her for help?” The thought made my stomach quiver. If you’ve never had a stomach quiver, trust me, it’s not something you’d want to experience.

  Melissa looked out the back window. “I don’t think you’ll have to go and ask,” she said ominously.

  Sure enough, Kerin was at the back door, and she’d already seen me through the window in the kitchen door, so I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t there. I would have to pretend Paul and Maxie weren’t, but that was little solace. “Let her in,” I said to Liss.

  Melissa unlocked the door, and Kerin, her face taut (no doubt with some surgical help) and severe (all on its own) strode in at ramming speed. “How dare you hang up on me!” she demanded. “I’ve called you four times since then and you’ve ignored my calls! You—”

  “Hello, Mrs. Murphy,” Melissa said. “How’s Marlee?” Kerin’s daughter and Melissa were no longer in the same class. There had been some scandal when Marlee was held back for a year after fourth grade.

  Kerin semi-froze, realizing Melissa was there, and she had to put on her Perfect Mom persona. She pivoted in a blink and gave Liss a ghastly warm smile. “She’s just fine, sweetie,” she cooed. “She misses being in class with you.” Melissa, who had never gotten along with Marlee, masked the fact that she knew Kerin was lying.

  “That’s nice,” Liss said.

  Kerin nodded, acknowledging that she was, indeed, nice, and patted Melissa on the head, which was about as condescending a move as she could improvise at the moment. “Now I have some business to discuss with your mommy, dear.” And she walked past Liss like she was a mannequin in the juniors’ department.

  “Somebody needs to take this witch down a notch,” Maxie suggested. Except she didn’t say witch. I don’t often agree with Maxie, but you can count that as one of those rarities.

  “You haven’t been taking this investigation seriously,” Kerin hissed at me when she came closer. “You haven’t been taking me seriously. That’s going to stop.”

  “Did you notice a name on the moving van in front of Dave Boffice’s house?” I asked her.

  She stopped advancing, stunned. “What?”

  “The moving van. You said you saw the moving van being loaded at Dave and Helen Boffice’s house. Did you notice the name of the van line?” I had decided to play offense, right around the time Kerin dismissed my daughter as a silly little girl. There are some lines you don’t cross. (It wasn’t much, really, but it was enough under the circumstances.)

  “I . . . the van . . . I don’t know,” Kerin said.

  “Think. You said you saw a van. What color was it?”

  Paul nodded in approval. “People remember more than they realize,” he said. “Walk her through the steps.”

  “Yellow,” Kerin answered. “Now. You’ve been—”

  “Okay, yellow,” I cut her off. “What color was the lettering?”

  “Black, of course,” she said, as if I should have known that.

  “Was there a picture on the side of the van?” I looked at Maxie, then at the ceiling. She nodded, understanding my signal to her to use Kerin’s clues to look up moving companies online, and went upstairs to retrieve the prehistoric laptop.

  “Yes,” Kerin told me. “There was a picture of
a truck on the truck. I mean, how stupid is that?”

  “Praise her for her help so far,” Paul advised. I gave him an annoyed look, which Kerin seemed to find puzzling. “Go ahead,” Paul continued.

  “That’s great,” I said through clenched teeth. Melissa nodded encouragement. “You’re doing really well. Now. Do you remember anything else about the van? Like what the name on the side might have been?”

  Maxie appeared in her trench coat, which allowed her to conceal the laptop as she traveled through walls. She took up a position behind Kerin so that anything she did would be out of Kerin’s field of vision.

  “It started with a K, I remember,” she said slowly. “I always notice Ks because it’s the same as my name.” Luckily, the ceiling fan was masking the quiet click of the computer keys, because Kerin didn’t seem to hear them.

  In the interest of the investigation I refrained from hitting her over the head with a frying pan. “That’s good. Anything else?” I asked.

  “Koban’s!” she said triumphantly. “It was Koban’s Van Lines. I remember because—”

  I didn’t care why she remembered. “That’s great! Thank you, Kerin! You were fantastic!”

  “Really?” Kerin asked. “I didn’t think I’d remember, but I did.”

  “Yes, you did,” I said, ushering her toward the back door. “You were a huge asset. Thank you for coming by.”

  “Oh, it was nothing!” Kerin gushed. “I’m always happy to be of help.”

  “Great,” I told her. “We’ll see you soon. Thanks so much for pitching in.”

  “Not at all. Call me anytime.” She would probably be halfway home before she realized she hadn’t gotten to yell at me the way she wanted to.

  That bought us the time we needed. “Maxie?” I said as soon as the back door was closed (and the shade over its window drawn).

  “Yep, I’ve got the phone number for Koban’s,” she said and read me the number.

  I punched the mover’s number into my cell phone, but from the den I heard Cybill calling for me. I started to disconnect the phone, but just at that moment, there was a click on my phone. “Koban’s. How can I help you?” The voice was male, middle-aged, and completely disinterested. Melissa waved a hand at me and walked to the kitchen door, indicating she’d handle the guest for now.