Haunted Guest House Mystery 03-Old Haunts

by E. J. Copperman

  “Tell the truth, I didn’t even notice that Wilson was gone until Luther mentioned his name the other night,” Rocco answered. “He just wasn’t that memorable a guy. I didn’t like him.”

  “I figured he and Big Bob went someplace together,” Little Bob said. “I hope that’s not what happened.”

  I nodded, then picked up my tote bag, thanked them for the soda, and started heading for the door. Little Bob asked me where I was going.

  “I have to try and get Maxie’s mother out of jail,” I said.

  * * *

  “The judge didn’t deny bail,” Alex Hayward, Kitty’s attorney, said. “He just set it so high that there was no chance of Kitty making even the 10 percent cash equivalent. He saw it was a murder, even one that took place two years ago, and he decided Kitty was a flight risk.”

  Alex, who was decidedly not a man as Kitty had suspected, leaned forward and placed her elbows on her very nicely appointed desk in her very nicely appointed office in the very nicely appointed building in which her firm, Morris, Hayward, Esteban and Weisel, occupied the entire very nicely appointed ninth floor. “It doesn’t make sense. If Kitty were a flight risk, she would have taken off two years ago,” Alex went on. “But the guidelines mention a million dollars as the proper bail for a homicide, and he didn’t even consider the circumstances. The prosecutor asked for no bail at all, and with what the judge did, he might just as well have granted that.” The mid-afternoon sun was hitting the blinds just right, so her face looked especially concerned.

  “I don’t understand,” I told her. “Why would anybody think Kitty was a flight risk? Why do they think she killed Big Bob?”

  “Well, the murder weapon in her house didn’t help her case much,” Alex answered with a raised eyebrow.

  “What did the judge say about the metal shavings in Big Bob’s head?” I asked, just to see if anyone else had fallen for that line of Ferry’s.

  “Metal shavings?” Alex asked. “Nobody said anything about metal shavings. I don’t even think that’s possible.” Okay, so I’m the only idiot. “But I’m told that the police heard about some comments that Kitty made in regard to the victim that aren’t going to play really well in court,” Alex added.

  “I’m tired of these insinuations,” I said. “I didn’t tell the police anything about what Kitty said to me.”

  Alex stood up and stretched her neck, bending it from side to side like an athlete preparing for the big game. I half expected her to drop to the ground and start grabbing the soles of her feet for a calf stretch. “Well, somebody did,” she said. “Finding out who that was might give us a lead. I’m going to put an investigator on it today, and I hope you understand that I’m not going to be hiring you.”

  No, you want someone who knows what she’s doing. “I completely understand,” I said. “But I’m not going to stop looking into this. I already have a client who’s asked me to find out who killed Big Bob.”

  Alex nodded. “Since I have you here, I’d like to pick your brain a little. What motivation would Kitty have to kill Bob Benicio? He and Maxie had already annulled their marriage; the records are clear that they were married four days in total. What difference would Bob have made to Kitty months later?”

  “I’m not going to mention any names, but I am told by people who knew Big Bob that he was thinking about reconciling with Maxie, and if that news had gotten back to Kitty—although I have no idea how that would have happened—she might have gotten upset. But the idea that she would have killed Big Bob for any reason is ridiculous.” I looked away, trying to think the problem through. As I did, I noticed the spirit of an old man watching me intently, as if trying to figure out who I was and why I was there. I realized his face matched that of a younger version I’d seen in a photograph in the lobby marked “Our Founder.” I’d practiced not reacting, but that one was hard. I was proud of myself.

  Enough of that. Any way I looked at it, there was no sense in the idea that Kitty had murdered Big Bob. And it was even more ridiculous that the police had arrested Kitty and the prosecutor insisted on unreachable bail based on the evidence they’d found. Yeah, the weapon was in Kitty’s house, but as far as I was concerned, that pointed more toward someone setting her up than to her being a devious killer who had stuck the wrench back into her toolbox rather than simply burying it next to the body, where it would never be able to tie her to the crime.

  Besides, how hard could Kitty Malone really have hit Big Bob with that wrench? She was hardly a firebrand of physical energy. Wouldn’t the medical examiner have concluded that the murderer had to be someone much stronger than Kitty?

  I expressed all those thoughts to Alex, who took careful notes and nodded as I spoke. “I agree with you,” she said, still leaning over her desk and writing on (what else?) a yellow legal pad. “There’s something we’re missing, and I have no idea what it might be, but I’m willing to bet it’s the key to this situation.”

  “So there’s no way to get Kitty out of jail now? She’s stuck in the county prison?” Maxie was not going to be pleased with the news I was bringing home, and for once, I wouldn’t be able to blame her for a bad mood.

  “It’s possible, I suppose, if you know someone with very deep pockets,” Alex said. “It’s a million dollars or 10 percent from a bail bondsman, so a hundred grand.”

  “Not that deep,” I answered. The wealthiest person I knew was The Swine, and he was living in my house on credit cards.

  “Then I’m afraid there isn’t much we can do, short of finding out what really happened.” Alex sat back down behind her desk, heavily. The stretching clearly had not helped, since she still seemed to have the weight of the world on her shoulders.

  “That’s what we’ll have to do, then,” I said.

  Under normal circumstances, that would have motivated me enough. But when I got to my car in the parking lot, my cell phone buzzed again, and this time, the thrill of fear I got was justified—there was another text message from a different number I hadn’t seen before.

  “I warned you,” it read.

  And I knew, for the life of me (literally), that I should have been terrified. I knew I should call Luther immediately and tell him I was off the case, then pick up Melissa and move to Utah, where we wouldn’t be found again. I was aware of all that. I had every right and every reason to be feeling absolute dread.

  But the fact of the matter was, this time the wild texter had just pissed me off. It was time to stop asking questions and start doing something to answer them.

  Twenty-one

  “I’ve never broken into a house before,” Jeannie said. “Do you think I’m the first pregnant woman who’s done this?”

  “The first one today, maybe,” I replied. We stood outside Kitty Malone’s cute little Cape Cod the next morning as I searched under the third stone in the walkway just to the left of the mailbox post, just as Maxie had advised. “And we’re not breaking in,” I insisted. “We’re going to use a key, and we have permission from the owner.” Sort of. I’m sure Kitty wouldn’t have minded if she’d known, but technically it was her deceased daughter who had indeed endorsed the idea with the comment that it was “about time you did something helpful.”

  I’d told Paul about the second text, but not Maxie. I had called McElone with the new incoming number, but not Ferry. I was making choices, mostly about who I liked better than someone else.

  “You’re taking the fun out of this for me,” Jeannie answered.

  “Sorry. I—there it is!” I found the front-door key, a little grimy but completely usable, and cleaned it off with my hands. “Let’s go.”

  “That’s gross,” Jeannie said, I’m assuming about the key. “You don’t have a moist wipe or something?”

  “Get over it.” We walked—that is, I walked and Jeannie sort of waddled—up to the front door of the house. I admired, as I had the other few times I’d been here, how well Kitty decorated and kept the place alive with plants, some of which were looking a tou
ch peaked at the moment, since their caretaker had been gone for more than a day. I picked up a watering can Kitty had left on the porch, filled it from a spigot on the side of the house and did some watering.

  “All ready to go in and snoop around now, Ms. Stewart?” Jeannie asked. “Or may I call you Martha?”

  “Has anyone ever encouraged you to go into stand-up comedy?” I asked her as I unlocked the front door.

  “As a matter of fact—” she began.

  “They were wrong.” I made sure to wipe my feet on the mat before entering, and indicated to Jeannie that she should do the same. It was like going to my grandmother’s house when I was little.

  I looked around. There was, of course, not a thing out of place. But then, that was weird—there should have been stuff out of place. “The cops didn’t toss her house?” I said to Jeannie. “How’d they find the wrench if they weren’t searching everywhere?”

  “Maybe she cleaned up after they found it,” Jeannie said.

  “In handcuffs?”

  “Leave me alone. I’m pregnant.”

  I felt strange even walking around in the house without Kitty there, but we walked slowly through the living room into the dining room, and back toward the kitchen. Nothing appeared to have been touched.

  “I don’t get it,” I said.

  “The only thing that makes sense is if they knew what they were looking for, and where to look for it,” Jeannie suggested.

  The full force of that took a moment to hit me, but when it did, I stopped walking. “Somebody dimed Kitty out?” I asked. “You think someone tipped off the cops about where they could find the wrench that killed Big Bob?”

  “Hey, nice lingo, Bogart! Forgive me, I didn’t go to private eye school like some of us,” Jeannie said. That was what I’d told her I had done, when in fact I’d gotten lessons from the exist-in sleuth in my house. It was just easier to tell Jeannie about the “Private U Detective School.”

  “No, I think you’re right.”

  She grinned, and then said she had to use the bathroom, which was something she did about every eight minutes these days. They say women would never have more than one child if they could remember what being pregnant and giving birth were really like. I think that’s nonsense; some women would still have twins. I, personally, recalled Melissa’s strong legs kicking me from inside and the “miracle of birth” well enough to be thrilled with what I had and want no more. If you catch my drift.

  With Jeannie out of the room, I could call Melissa and ask her to get Paul’s reaction to what I was finding out. I spoke quietly so Jeannie wouldn’t hear me, even though she was two rooms away. The woman has ears like a bat. But an attractive bat. And not having to have the “you really don’t have ghosts in your house” conversation with her again was worth dropping my voice to a gasp temporarily.

  Liss got up to the attic, where Paul was still doing his “Dracula during the day” impression, and put the phone up next to where his ear would be if he were really there. Luckily, his ear was a lot closer to the floor now than it would have been normally, so she could reach much more easily.

  “They didn’t toss her house?” he asked once I’d given him the Reader’s Digest version of what we’d found (or, more specifically, had not found). “That doesn’t make any sense at all, unless—”

  “Unless they knew where to look, right? Someone’s trying to set Kitty up for Big Bob’s murder, aren’t they?”

  I could almost see Paul stroke his goatee in thought. “That seems like the most logical reasoning,” he said. “You should get in touch with her attorney again when you’re finished searching the house and see if you can get the message to Kitty in county lockup.”

  “I hate thinking of her there,” I told him. “It must be so scary.”

  “You’re working toward getting her out,” Paul answered. “Focus on that.”

  “You’re pretty smart for a guy who can’t keep his head off the floor.”

  “My life is just upside down these days,” he said; then he thought about what he’d said and added, “My so-called life.”

  “I’m going to check the basement,” I said. “What should I look for?”

  There was another goatee-stroking moment. “Any evidence that someone broke in down there,” he said. “Clearly, the weapon was planted in the basement, and Kitty probably didn’t knowingly let the murderer into her basement, so we have to assume that someone broke in and planted the wrench.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks for the help. I’ll—”

  I snapped the phone shut as I heard Jeannie open the bathroom door. By the time she walked out, I had already slid it back into the hip pocket of my jeans. “Were you talking to somebody?” Jeannie asked. “I thought I heard your voice.”

  “Just talking to one of my ghosts,” I told her. It wouldn’t make any difference now, and sometimes I like to push her, just to see how she’ll rationalize it when I tell her the truth. “Getting advice on the investigation.”

  “Oh, good,” she said, smiling her “you’re just so funny” smile. “What did the ghost say we should do?”

  “Check the basement.”

  “Big deal. I could have said that. Huh! Ghosts.” She started toward the door to the basement stairway, and I beat her there.

  “I’m faster than you,” I teased her. Jeannie stuck out her tongue at me. We have a very mature relationship.

  We started down the basement steps. “Hey, how come you can’t just ask Big Bob’s ghost who killed him?”

  There was no point in trying to explain the “some ghosts do, some ghosts don’t” policy. “He was hit from behind,” I told her. “He didn’t see who it was.”

  Jeannie giggled. “You kill me.”

  “I almost never want to.”

  The basement, as in most of the older full-time homes near the shore, was small and relatively dark. Kitty had not had it finished, so the walls were still bare concrete and the ceiling consisted of bare beams. But Kitty had organized the space more than efficiently; it had been done artfully. The basement, neater than my underused kitchen, was a sight to behold.

  Clothing was kept on garment racks (on wheels, for easy transportation), each article in a plastic garment bag, clear, to better identify them yet keep them protected from the damp. Down the shore, we do damp like nobody’s business.

  Relics from another age, like vinyl records, VHS tapes, scrapbooks and photograph albums, were kept in plastic bins with lids, each bin marked very specifically (“Maxie pix 1985” was the one I’d most like to have looked at). Nothing was random, nothing was stored on the basement floor, but on pallets, and nothing—nothing—was out of place.

  “They didn’t toss down here, either,” I said.

  “Somebody gave really good directions, don’t you think?” Jeannie said.

  I looked at the outer walls. If there had been a break-in, it came from outside (“Well, duh,” I heard Melissa say in my head). “Can you reach the windows?” I asked Jeannie.

  “When I was unencumbered, maybe,” she answered. “Not so much now. Why?”

  “I want to see if there are scratch marks where somebody broke in carefully.”

  “Well, wouldn’t the marks be on the outside?” Jeannie asked.

  Wise guy. “Yes, but there might be something in here, too. We’re here, so let’s look. We can look outside later.”

  We spent the next ten minutes trying to raise ourselves (more specifically, myself; I wasn’t risking Jeannie on an egg crate) to the level of the basement windows. Finally, standing on an egg crate placed on an ottoman, I could stand at eye level with the windowsill. Of course, there was no mark here, and only five more windows to check from this precarious perch.

  “Do you want me to go outside and look?” Jeannie asked.

  “No, I want you in here to call nine-one-one when I fall and break an important bone or two,” I told her. “Look around the basement. Find the toolbox where they found the wrench.”

 
Jeannie started to move around the basement, index finger curled and touching her upper lip, the International Sign of Jeannie Thinking. It wasn’t going to take long; the room was wonderfully organized, so there weren’t many little nooks into which something could have been secreted.

  “The cops didn’t have to disturb anything down here, either,” she said, thinking out loud. I didn’t answer. “So it had to be out in plain sight.”

  “Do you think they took the whole toolbox?” I asked, setting up under the second window.

  “Why do that? It seems like someone was practically putting up neon signs with arrows that said, ‘Here’s the murder weapon.’ It’s not like they think someone killed him with a roll of electrical tape.” Jeannie had a point.

  “No, but they didn’t know it was a wrench, did they?” I stood up on my wobbly contraption again, testing it carefully before putting my full weight on the inverted egg crate. Why hadn’t it occurred to me to look for a ladder in this basement? There had to be one. “I mean, they knew it was a heavy metal object. Could have been anything.”

  “We’re dealing with cops who had been really carefully led here,” Jeannie said. “I think they knew exactly what they were looking for, and found it in the first two minutes of looking.”

  “So how come you haven’t found the toolbox yet?” I asked.

  “Just check the damn windows.”

  I looked at the frame of each window around the basement, and found no scrapes, no missing paint, no broken glass, nothing that would indicate a break-in. It was one of the few times in my life I’ve been disappointed to see that things were in perfect order. Come to think of it, it was one of the few times in my life I’ve seen things in perfect order. My life tends to be slightly messier than Kitty’s.

  Except Kitty was in jail. Had to keep that in mind, and go on looking.

  Jeannie was somewhat luckier in her search. She simply opened the door on a storage cabinet, and found a small metal toolbox with three pull-out drawers. I climbed down off my shaky perch to examine it with her.