Haunted Guest House Mystery 03-Old Haunts

by E. J. Copperman

  “Should we wear gloves, or something?” Jeannie asked. “There are some gardening gloves over there.” She pointed toward a small bucket that Kitty clearly used in the garden, with a tiny spade and a pair of gloves inside it, looking clean enough to eat with.

  “We’re not committing a crime,” I reminded her. “If the cops had wanted to confiscate this stuff, it would be gone now.”

  The toolbox was, as I now expected, very well organized. Kitty didn’t own a lot of tools, but the screwdrivers were all kept in one spot, the one hammer in another, the tapes (electrical, masking, painter’s) together, paint brushes, roller sleeves…

  . . . and wrenches.

  There wasn’t a wrench set, like the one my considerably more massive toolbox (on wheels, with nine drawers and two doors) in the guesthouse contained. There were exactly three wrenches: a three-sixteenths, a small adjustable and a larger, maybe six-inch, adjustable wrench.

  “What’s wrong with this picture?” I asked Jeannie. “Your husband’s a contractor. Why is this wrong?”

  She looked at me. “I don’t know. I work for an insurance company. If you want me to call Tony and ask him…” She reached for her cell phone.

  I shook my head. “No. Here’s the problem; she already had two adjustable wrenches, both sized for the kind of problems a homeowner would encounter. The one that the cops took out of here had to be much, much larger to do lethal damage to Big Bob’s skull.”

  Jeannie picked up on my vibe. “So…why would she need a wrench that big? Why would she have had it in the first place?”

  “And, more than that,” I said, “where would she have put it in this toolbox? The wrench area is much too small to accommodate it.”

  Jeannie pointed at one of the small storage areas on the bottom. “It would fit in there,” she suggested.

  “Yeah, but this is Kitty we’re talking about. This is her toolbox. I’ve never seen such a neat, organized toolbox in my life. If that’s where the wrenches went, that would be where all the wrenches went, or she’d move them all to keep them together.”

  She thought about that and nodded slowly. “This is an even more obvious plant than we thought.” She stopped, thought and shook her head. “Those cops are really dumb.”

  I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. “That’s the thing,” I said. “I really don’t think they are.” I dialed Alex Hayward’s number.

  Twenty-two

  Alex promised to look into what I was saying, and informed me that Kitty Malone had not yet been moved to the county jail. She said the prosecutor and the Seaside Heights police wouldn’t give her a satisfactory explanation for her client’s continued stay at the small holding facility down the shore, but she wasn’t complaining about not moving Kitty into a larger, scarier jail. She said she’d call me the next day.

  Maxie was not exactly buoyed by the news that her mom was still in a small barred room, and although I hadn’t exactly expected a ticker-tape parade in my honor, I had hoped that the fact that Kitty was still in a Seaside Heights cell and not the county lockup would be considered something approximating “good news.”

  Not so much.

  “Why couldn’t you get her out of jail?” she wailed at me the instant I walked through the front door. Maxie had apparently been eavesdropping on a phone call I’d made to Melissa on the way back from dropping Jeannie at her house in Lavallette. “My mom didn’t kill Big Bob! What’s she still doing behind bars?”

  “Not now,” I singsonged to her as I walked through the living room, where Mrs. Spassky was watching the flat-screen TV the Down the Shore production crew had left hanging from one of my hundred-year-old crossbeams. “I have to talk to Paul.”

  “Captain Inversion is up in the attic, being all girly about how nobody should see him like this,” Maxie scoffed. “Like somebody besides us could see him. What’s he going to do for you?”

  “Not me; it’s what he’s going to do for Kitty,” I said in a conversational voice.

  “Oh,” Mrs. Spassky said, looking around on the floor. “Do you have a cat?”

  “No, Mrs. Spassky. Just a ghost.”

  She nodded and went back to CNN. Apparently, a Hollywood starlet had entered rehab for the third time, and the news anchor had the gall to look as if she was surprised.

  Francie Westen, fanning herself despite the completely effective air-conditioning in the room, stopped me on my way toward the backyard, which I could see through the French doors at the rear of the den. Steven was out there talking to Lucy Simone, and Melissa was nowhere in sight despite it being late enough in the day that her chambermaid duties would certainly have been fulfilled by now. She was on her own, which made me start thinking of my ex as The Swine again. “The brochure mentioned direct contact with the spirits in the house,” Francie said with a confrontational tone. “I’m leaving in a few days, and so far, all I’ve seen is stuff flying around the house. When do I get to talk to a ghost?”

  “You’re talking to one now, lady,” Maxie said. I gave her a very quick disapproving look, and she twisted her mouth into a sneer and vanished into the ceiling.

  We had experimented with the idea of a “séance” in the house when the first guests had arrived a few months before, and the results were, let’s say, something I’d rather not have replicated. But part of the Senior Plus deal was that the guests who wanted a conference with those beyond the grave would have the opportunity. I had cut back, therefore, on the spooky accoutrements involved with the “séance” and scheduled a few daytime sit-downs during which I would field questions for Paul and Maxie. It was sort of like The View, but with dead people.

  “We’ll be doing that tomorrow at nine thirty, Francie,” I told her. “Have your questions ready.”

  But Francie continued to frown. “I was hoping for something a little more…personal,” she said.

  That stopped me, even as Lucy was laughing at something “witty” The Swine had said to her. “In what way?” I asked Francie. This was sounding just a bit kinky.

  “Like a one-on-one discussion. Something I could tell the folks back home about. ‘I got to talk to a ghost,’ you know. That sort of thing.”

  I wasn’t sure I was getting this. “Well, you will get to talk to a ghost,” I said. “Tomorrow, at nine thirty.”

  “No, I’ll get to talk to you,” Francie countered. “How do I know there’s a ghost present? How do I know you’re not making up any answers you want?”

  Oh. That. “Not to worry, Francie. I guarantee you, there’s no way you’ll walk out of that room thinking you didn’t talk to a ghost. Trust me.”

  Francie puckered up her lips, like she didn’t want to trust me at all. “Okay,” she said, drawing the word out a few feet. “But remember—”

  “I know. A personal experience.” I nodded. I’d gotten this before. Some guests didn’t just want to see ghosts; they wanted the ghosts to think that they, the guests, were the most fascinating people on the planet. It’s sort of interesting to watch.

  I managed to break free from Francie and walk out through the French doors into the backyard. The Swine and Lucy were standing at one end of the yard, closest to the slope that led down to the beach. They were facing the ocean, and my ex-husband swept his arm in a gesture of…something. I wasn’t that close yet.

  When I got closer, I could hear him saying, “They’ll all be able to better their financial future, with only a tiny investment, really the price of a cup of coffee a day.”

  “Not that many lower-income people spend four bucks on a latte every day,” I said, from behind him. They both turned to face me, and The Swine lowered his arm, as he was finished envisioning things. “If they did,” I continued, “they’d have fourteen hundred and sixty dollars a year. Do you think poor people can afford to invest fourteen hundred and sixty dollars a year?”

  “Alison,” he said, as if he was surprised it was me. “Of course I don’t expect low-income people to invest that kind of money. It was just an expression.�
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  “I have another expression for you,” I said. “Where’s our daughter?” Then I looked toward Lucy. “Hi, Lucy.” She was a guest, after all.

  “Hi, Alison.” Lucy was quick on the pickup.

  “Wendy called and asked if Melissa wanted to go with her to shop for…something, and then your mother said she’d pick her up at Wendy’s and bring back some dinner,” The Swine answered. “They should be back in a half hour or so. Why? Is something wrong?”

  “Of course not. May I speak with you for a minute?” I gestured toward the house. “You don’t mind, do you, Lucy?”

  “Mind what?” Smart as a whip, that one.

  Steven walked inside with me to the kitchen, where the air-conditioning isn’t quite as efficient, but still better than the sweltering July heat. I put my hand on my hip and shook my head in the general direction of my ex-husband.

  “I asked you to see to it that Lucy was out of the house during the spook shows,” I told him. “I didn’t ask you to adopt her.”

  “What’s this about?” he demanded. “You can’t be jealous, can you?”

  “I’m not jealous; I’m annoyed. You got rid of your own daughter so you could dazzle Princess Jasmine with your financial prowess.”

  The Swine looked at me sideways, like I would make more sense if he could use just his good eye. He spoke slowly and lowered his voice for emphasis on how controlled he was being.

  “Wendy’s mother called,” he said. “She asked if Melissa could go with them to the mall, and then Melissa asked your mother to pick her up so they could get something for dinner. Melissa wanted to go. She asked me if it was all right, and I said yes. Now. Which part of that indicates that I was trying to get rid of my daughter?”

  Have you ever been so frustrated in an argument that you couldn’t speak because you knew you were right, but you couldn’t prove it? I had seen this movie before, and I knew how it ended. But everything Steven said made perfect sense in context, and there was absolutely no counterargument I could make that would make a difference.

  So, in a triumph of maturity and emotional stability, I stormed out of the kitchen and ran up all the stairs to the attic.

  There, I encountered the inverted ghost of a rookie private detective and the right-side-up spirit of a perpetually twenty-eight-year-old interior designer, who took one look at me, bared her teeth and flew up onto the roof through the attic ceiling, making a noise like a disgruntled preteen denied tickets to a Justin Bieber concert. Paul, who had been facing away from me, rotated on his head to see who had entered the room.

  “So,” I said. “How has your day been?”

  “Same old, same old,” he answered.

  Paul got into sleuth mode when I mentioned Kitty Malone and the Big Bob case, and listened as I updated him on the situation. I did not fill him in on the Julia MacKenzie search, because that one seemed destined to end badly. He understood my ground rules on my attempts to find Julia, and did not ask about my progress. As if there had been some.

  When I was finished recounting the day’s events (adding that we had found no obvious signs of a break-in at Kitty’s house, even outside the basement windows), and Paul had stroked his beard to a fine froth, he chewed his bottom lip a bit and said, “Interesting that there were no signs of a break-in outside. How did the wrench get into Mrs. Malone’s basement, then?”

  “If I could answer even one question about this case, I’d feel like I had a good day,” I told him.

  “But I think you’ve analyzed it impeccably, Alison,” Paul told me. “It sounds very much like the police were being led to that discovery by someone who wanted to frame Mrs. Malone, and for some reason, they’re choosing not to see that.”

  “Luther kept saying the cops aren’t interested in one biker killing another one,” I told him. “I guess they figure they’ve found a nice easy solution, and they’re not looking a gift horse in the mouth.”

  Paul frowned. Upside down, it still didn’t look like a smile, no matter what my mother had told me when I was six. “It’s not like bikers are gang members anymore, really. Most never were. I really don’t want to believe that the police are acting with that level of cynicism. There has to be another explanation.”

  “They decided to show Kitty some hospitality because they think she’ll review their jail for Zagat?”

  He ignored that, which shows what a wise man he is. Was. Anyway, he said, “If the police aren’t going to be any help, we will have to proceed on our own. It’s dangerous to assume without enough facts, but the only motivation I can imagine for someone to want Kitty to be arrested as the murderer is—”

  “To get the real murderer off the hook,” I said, nodding. “But the question becomes, Is the person doing the framing the killer or someone who just wants the killer to go free?”

  “A very good question,” Paul agreed. “We might be able to make an investigator out of you after all.” He smiled.

  “For a guy who’s upside down, you can be pretty nervy,” I told him. “What are we going to do about that, by the way?”

  “Since we don’t know what caused it, I really can’t say how we can cure it,” Paul answered, the smile having left his face. “Unfortunately, we can’t just call Dr. Bombay and get the supernatural pill that will solve the whole problem.”

  The Bewitched reference made me think of cures. “What has Maxie turned up on her Internet research?” I asked him. “She’s so mad at me about her mom that I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t tell me now if I asked.”

  “You two need to work out your problem,” he said. Personally, I believed that any animosity between Maxie and me would evaporate once Kitty was out of jail. If she didn’t get out, well—I didn’t want to think about the problems that would cause for us all. “She told me she’d only done some preliminary research, but so far, she hasn’t found another case like mine.”

  “Swell.” Maxie, despite her constant grumbling about being stuck with “desk work,” was a very good online researcher. If she couldn’t find any references on heels-over-head ghosts, it was extremely possible there weren’t any, and we were on our own in trying to get Paul floating on his own two feet again.

  “But she did say that there were references, on some very obscure websites, of people like us who could not gain equilibrium just before they moved on to a different plane of existence,” Paul said.

  That was a large statement, and it took a moment to sink in. Paul and Maxie, having become ghosts not long after they were murdered, seemed to be on the first, or lowest, level of postlife experience, as it would no doubt be described in brochures, assuming such things existed. Although Paul was always careful to remind me that he had been given “no handbook” on how to be a ghost, we had seen a spirit move on to the next level months before, and it had seemed like a positive experience for him.

  “You mean you might be changing?” I asked him.

  “Life is constant change,” Paul said. “There’s no reason death can’t be the same thing, I guess. I know this feels different than before, but I can’t really describe how that is.”

  “But the only time I saw this happen to somebody, it happened pretty fast,” I said. “This has been more than a day already, and maybe longer.” I found myself arguing against the idea, and I wasn’t immediately sure why I wanted to.

  “I’m not saying that’s what it is,” he answered. “Even Maxie said it was just the first try at researching this.”

  I mused on that for a while, and stood up, causing Paul to rise higher in the air to maintain eye contact. “Well, assuming you don’t move on to Nirvana before tomorrow, you’re still going to be around for the ghost meet-and-greet, right?”

  He smiled. “Yes. I won’t be visible to anyone but you and Melissa, so my…affliction won’t alarm anyone.”

  “So, what do I do about Kitty and Big Bob?” I asked him.

  “I think the key to this whole question could well be Wilson Meyers,” Paul mused. “His disappearing at the same
time as Big Bob is too big a coincidence not to be related. He must know something. We’re going to have to track him down.”

  “Any ideas on how?”

  “Sit down, Alison,” Paul said. “I’m going to teach you how to find a missing person.”

  Just what I’d wanted to learn.

  And that’s when it hit me: I knew exactly why it bothered me that Paul might be evolving into the next kind of ghost. The one and only time I’d seen it happen was to a ghost we’d just gotten to know, and he’d been ecstatic as he moved on to the next level.

  But then he was gone, and we’d never seen him again.

  Twenty-three

  “I don’t get it,” said Detective Lieutenant Anita McElone. “I pay my taxes. I donate to charity. I’m nice to small furry animals and I volunteer at the local soup kitchen. So why exactly am I being punished? This is the second time you’ve come in to bother me this week. Is that fair?”

  McElone was sitting behind her desk with a fresh iced coffee and a bran muffin. But having been blatantly insulted, I felt it best not to throw gasoline on the fire by noting to McElone that there were worse things that could happen to cops, even if they were being a royal pain.

  “I’m not here to torment you. I left Jeannie at home,” I pointed out. “I’m just looking for some help with two missing persons. One of them is actually even missing.”

  McElone took an aggressive bite out of the muffin, chewed carefully and swallowed. She would never speak with food in her mouth. “You want me to help you find two missing people, and only one of them is missing? That just makes the other one a person.”

  “Well, she’s not legally missing; it’s just that I can’t find her,” I explained. Maybe I should have brought Jeannie, after all. It had worked in the past.

  “Does it occur to you—as a ‘private investigator’—that asking the police to do all your work for you borders on fraud? I mean, if all you do for your clients is ask me to do something they could ask for themselves, what are you being paid for?” McElone did not move to punch anything in on her keyboard, which probably made sense, since I hadn’t mentioned Wilson Meyers or Julia MacKenzie yet.