Haunted House Murder

by Leslie Meier

  Harley pulled to the side of the road across from a particularly well-known grave and motioned for us to get out. He led us across the lane and we stood around the large marble marker emblazoned with the words UNKNOWN MERMAID.

  The unknown mermaid was one of the few legends or ghost stories in our town that was demonstrably true. Not the ghost part, of course, but that such a person had existed. The proof was the headstone our little group clustered around.

  Harley stood at the front and told the story—or tried to.

  “One winter day in 1901, the lighthouse keeper at Herrickson Point Light walked into Westclaw Village to get supplies and pick up his mail.”

  “February 18, 1901 to be precise,” Clyde said. He was not a tall man, and at first it was hard to see where his voice had come from. But then the teenagers shuffled out of the way, and there Clyde was, his bald head fringed with sandy blond hair that had half gone gray. He had on an L.L. Bean jacket that was unzipped to show his plaid shirt and khaki pants, which were belted above the navel.

  “Yes, thank you, Clyde.” Harley wrested back control. “On his way the lighthouse keeper passed a beautiful woman in the finest clothes walking in the opposite direction. There was nothing out there but the lighthouse and the point, so he asked if she was lost. She said no and went on her way.”

  “The lighthouse keeper’s name was Samuel Herrickson,” Clyde added.

  “Thank you, Clyde.” Harley didn’t look happy. I could tell Clyde was messing with his rhythm.

  At that point, Sarah, one of Dan and Darla Small’s four teenaged daughters, rose out from behind the headstone. The Smalls were six of the most gorgeous people anyone had ever seen—tall and blond, tanned, long-limbed and healthy-looking with perfectly symmetrical features, straight, bright-white teeth, and big, dark-lashed gray eyes. The sight of one was arresting. When the six, parents and daughters, were together, it was impossible not to stare. The parents owned and ran the ice cream shop on the town pier, just across from the Snowden Family Clambake ticket kiosk, so I saw a lot of them. And still I stared.

  All the Small daughters had taken a ton of ballet. Sarah, the second oldest, emerged ethereally from behind the Unknown Mermaid’s headstone, one long leg extension at a time. Her costume, a Gibson girl bodice that slowly dissolved into shredded sleeves and shirt, only added to her beauty. Despite my perky flapper dress, I had momentary costume envy.

  Sarah danced prettily in front of the headstone while Harley continued the story. “When the lighthouse keeper returned to the point, he didn’t see the woman. The next day, he and his wife found her body, brought in by the tide.”

  “Actually, it was his sister, not his wife,” Clyde said. “Samuel didn’t marry until 1907.”

  Harley shot him a murderous glance. Sarah lay down on the grass and two other Small daughters danced out from behind the big headstone, dressed as the lighthouse keeper and his wife (or sister). They pantomimed exclamations when they found her. The lighthouse keeper checked Sarah’s pulse while his wife (or sister) listened to her heart. Then they held each other and cried.

  “She had stones in the pockets of her overcoat, but had left no note,” Harley told us. “The labels of her expensive, fashionable clothes had been cut out. The people of the village tried to puzzle out the identity of the dead woman.” So far, despite Clyde’s interruptions, Harley was holding the crowd’s attention pretty well. Given that a quarter of them were teenaged boys, and the Smalls were, it cannot be said enough, gorgeous, he didn’t have to work too hard.

  “The townspeople looked far and wide,” Harley said. Plie-ing in fourth position, the lighthouse keeper and his wife (or sister) put hands to their brows and looked around. “How did she get to town? No one admitted to having driven her down the peninsula from the train station, and none of the conductors claimed to have seen her. Since the dead woman clearly had expensive clothes, the townspeople thought she must be a member of a summer family or at least someone who had been a guest of one. How else would she know about the little village or the direction of the point?” Harley paused so we could all think about that.

  “But when the season came and the summer families returned, no one claimed to have known her. She’d been buried in the lighthouse keeper’s family plot and the citizens of Busman’s Harbor chipped in to erect the stone you see here. People see the Unknown Mermaid regularly, both here in the cemetery and at the old keeper’s cottage at Herrickson Point. Sometimes from the point, they see her swimming in the waves, free from whatever the cares were that drove her to her fate.”

  The three Small sisters did a pretty little step-step-turn and took a bow. The tour members clapped appreciatively.

  Beat that, I thought as I got back on the trolley.

  * * *

  The two teenaged couples asked for bottles of water, which I fetched for them. But, instead of returning to the bench at the back Harley had assigned to me, I sat down next to the single woman. She had watched the performance at the first stop with a look of studied determination, not cracking a smile. Hers seemed like a strange attitude for a person who would want to go on a haunted house tour alone.

  “Hi. I’m Julia Snowden,” I said.

  She looked over at me but didn’t smile. “Carla.” No last name. Even in the low light of the trolley, I could see she had luxurious, long brown hair, held back by a pair of large barrettes, and large brown eyes. She appeared to be in her late thirties or early forties.

  “What attracted you to the tour?” I tried to draw her out.

  “You know, ghosts, dead people, people from the past.” She waved a loose hand, implying all that was out there. She had a slight accent, soft and sibilant. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought it might be Spanish.

  “Ah.” I didn’t know where to go from there. “Do you believe in ghosts?” seemed too intimate a question for someone who to all appearances did not wish to be engaged. We rode in silence back down the peninsula to the second site on the tour.

  Harley parked the trolley on the street and shepherded us into the old stable behind the Snugg sisters’ B and B. The stable was normally choc-o-block full of stored outdoor furniture and various castoffs from two generations of Snuggs. Someone had cleared enough space for the tour members to crowd in.

  Harley started his story about a stable boy, an orphan taken in by the sea captain, who had built the house. The stable boy had died after being kicked in the head by a horse. He roamed the barn still, looking for his parents. The tale didn’t hold together particularly well. Why was he looking in the stable for his parents? All the people who had claimed to have seen the ghost were conveniently out-of-towners who had stayed at the inn.

  More saliently, Fiona and Viola Snugg, known to one and all as Fee and Vee, had lived across the street from my parents’ house for my entire life. I’d had the run of their place and treated it as a second home. I had never, ever, heard a story about a stable boy ghost or any other ghost.

  In a dark corner, the teenagers snickered and poked each other as Harley told the tale. The two boys taking the tour with their mother were politely attentive, but nowhere near as engaged as they’d been out at the cemetery. The older boy’s eyes kept wandering back to the B and B.

  “I’ve never heard this story,” Clyde said. His tone implied that if he hadn’t heard it, it wasn’t true. For once, I agreed with him.

  As if sensing he was losing his audience, Harley hustled us back onto the trolley. I introduced myself to the mother and her two sons and sat down next to the older boy. After all, if I was supposed to be the host, I should host.

  “I’m Julia,” I said, leaving aside the last names, having learned my lesson with the recalcitrant Carla.

  “Joyce Bayer,” the mom said, providing her surname and proving you should never try to predict what people will do. She put her hand over the back of my seat so I could shake it. “This is Will.” She indicated the younger boy sitting next to her. “And this is Kieran.” She pointed to the older bo
y sitting next to me, who smiled.

  There was no time for more conversation because we were at our next stop, a big Victorian on Main Street much like my mother’s. We all got off. The daughter in the mother-daughter duo helped her mother up the front steps. We crowded into the front hall, tracking grass from the cemetery and dirt from the stable on our shoes.

  Harley’s story, I had to admit, was a good one, about the sea captain builder of the house who was killed when he was washed overboard in a storm. His ghost returned to his beloved home to find his widow had taken up with a new man. The ghost so terrified his successor that the man ran out of the house screaming, vowing never to return.

  I thought the story was pretty good, but the giggling teenagers were clearly unimpressed. One of the boys asked if he could use the bathroom in the house, and I was grateful my mother hadn’t caved to Harley’s pressure to use her home. I assured the kid our next stop was a restaurant, with restrooms.

  Harley herded us back onto the trolley. I sat in front of the mother-daughter combo; the only two I hadn’t introduced myself to, aside from Clyde and the group of four teenagers. “I’m Marge,” the older woman said. “This is my daughter, Elizabeth.”

  “Hello, Elizabeth.” I got a shy nod of the head. Evidently the daughter couldn’t speak for herself.

  Settling into my seat as we drove toward Gus’s, I was relieved the next stop would supply a little drama, and snacks. It was six-twenty. We were only five minutes behind schedule. Showtime.

  Chapter Four

  We all trooped down the stairs and entered the front room of the restaurant. The place smelled great from the warm cider, which was out, along with the pumpkin bread and lemon ginger cookies, on a long table that blocked off the counter and kitchen area. In my absence, the guys had really outdone themselves. They had piled boxes artfully around the room, with straw and bottles of Canadian Club and other whiskeys tumbling out of them. The whole effect was warehouse-cum-speakeasy. It looked great. Most of the lights were off except for the ones over the café tables and the two exit signs, which glowed dimly. I noticed two speakers among the boxes, the sound system for the machine gun noise, no doubt.

  “Ah, the story of Ned Calhoun,” Clyde said.

  Harley stared daggers at him for naming the ghost before he could. I hoped Harley didn’t think it was part of my job as host and customer-wrangler to keep Clyde quiet, because I didn’t think I could.

  I hurried into the restroom to shed my trench coat and put on my cloche. When I came out, the tour members were all seated at the café tables with their snacks. I sat at the table with the RESERVED sign, now strategically placed under the light switch.

  Harley stood up and started the tale. He made Ned Calhoun sound even more like a Robin Hood for the town than he had in his original telling. Clyde tried to interrupt a couple of times, but Harley talked right over him and he shut up.

  When Harley got to the part about Sweet Sue, he gestured to me. I smiled coyly, crossed my legs, and batted my eyelashes. The group smiled back appreciatively.

  When Harley mentioned Capone’s men, Chris, Gus, and Sonny charged out the door of our apartment into the restaurant. They looked a hundred times better than they had in the dress rehearsal. Chris wore his own black dress pants. Sonny had supplied his own shirt, which fit, and Gus wore what I assumed to be his own fedora. The Tommy guns still looked small and plastic, but the hoodlums wisely kept them at their sides. They came off as intimidating as they were meant to be.

  Harley worked up to the dramatic moment. “Not knowing Capone’s thugs were in place, Ned innocently returned to his waterfront warehouse to meet Sweet Sue.” As subtly as possible, Harley pressed the screen on his cell phone, sending the text to Ned Calhoun.

  Seconds later, the trapdoor flew open. I opened my mouth and gave my most full-throated scream. Spencer’s head emerged as he climbed the stairs under the trapdoor and I doused the lights. There was a terrific boom, which left my ears ringing. For a split second, I thought, “Wow, that gun sound effect is much more realistic,” but no sounds of machine gunfire followed. Something was terribly wrong. I quickly flicked on the lights.

  There was a horrified gasp. It might have been me who made it. It might have been somebody else; it might have been all of us collectively. The actor, Spencer Jones, lay as still as a mannequin on top of the open trapdoor, his legs bent at the knees, dangled over the stairs. He had been shot squarely in the forehead.

  Chris and Sonny ran toward Spencer. “Nobody move!” I shouted. I knew from unfortunate experience the police would want to talk to all the witnesses.

  Nobody did move for a second, and then all of them, including Harley, got up and ran for the stairs, screaming out into the night and leaving Chris, Sonny, Gus, and I staring at one another in stunned silence.

  Chapter Five

  Chris, his fingers pressed to Spencer’s carotid artery, looked at me and shook his head. I took my cell phone out of the beaded handbag and pressed 911. In Maine, the state police Major Crimes Units investigate all suspicious deaths that occur outside Portland and Bangor, the only cities big enough to have their own detective squads. In response to my emergency call, the local Busman’s Harbor police would get here first, secure the scene, and connect with the state police and the medical examiner.

  “Stay on the line,” the 911 dispatcher commanded. “Is there an active shooter at your location?”

  I looked from Gus to Chris to Sonny. “I—I don’t think so.”

  “You’re not sure?” she clarified.

  “Unless he’s hiding. No one is shooting now.”

  “Are there weapons at your location?”

  Two plastic toy guns were on the floor where Chris and Sonny had dropped them. “Gus, put that down.” I pointed to his machine gun. He dropped it. “There are toy weapons on the floor here,” I told the dispatcher. “Please don’t shoot us.”

  Almost immediately, there was a blaring of sirens and sound of vehicles braking in the street. Above us, the front door banged open.

  “Identify yourselves!” I recognized the voice of my childhood friend, Jamie Dawes, calling from up the restaurant stairs. Jamie had recently become the second-newest member of the Busman’s Harbor PD due to the presence of a new hire.

  “Julia Snowden!” I called out.

  “Christopher Durand!”

  “Bard Ramsey, Junior!” The last time I’d heard Sonny use his given name was at his wedding to my sister.

  “Gus Farnham!”

  There were a few moments of silence.

  “Four people total? How many weapons?”

  “Four people, plus one dead body. Three toy plastic machine guns. No working weapons,” Chris called back.

  “Put the toy guns on the floor, where we can see them when we approach,” Jamie directed.

  “Already done,” Chris answered.

  “We’re coming down.” Jamie’s long legs appeared on the stairs followed by the shorter, squatter ones of his partner, Pete Howland. When they came into view, their guns were drawn. The four us of stood with our hands up while they searched both restrooms, the coat closet, the dining room, the pantry, and the walk-in refrigerator.

  Howland went up the stairs to my apartment while Jamie went to the kitchen door of the restaurant, unlocked it, and stuck his head out. He said something, undoubtedly to other officers who were searching Gus’s little parking lot, and then shut the door.

  “Clear,” Howland announced when he came down the steps a minute or two later. A minute or two that felt like an eternity. The police holstered their guns. Jamie moved toward the body. Chris and Sonny stepped back, allowing him access. He bent his blond head and did the same things they’d done, checking for a pulse and a heartbeat, though it was obvious Spencer Jones was dead.

  “Tell the EMTs they can leave,” Jamie told Howland. “He isn’t one for them.” He turned toward us. “Why don’t you all sit down?” Jamie pointed toward the second room of the restaurant, the dining
room. “This is going to take a while.” He pulled out a cell phone and walked away from us, presumably to report in to the Major Crimes Unit. Gus led us to a table in the dining room, strategically placed out of the sightline to the body.

  Chris reached for my hand under the table and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “How many reservations did we have for tonight?”

  “Plenty, it’s Saturday.”

  “I guess the cop at the door will turn them away,” he said.

  “Those who don’t look up Main Street and see all the cop vehicles and draw their own conclusions,” Sonny put in.

  When Jamie finished his call, he came over to where we sat.

  “Do you know the victim’s name?” he asked.

  “Spencer Jones,” I answered.

  “Why is he half-in half-out of the trapdoor? And why are you all dressed like that? And what’s all this?” He pointed into the front room toward the cups of now-cool cider and the remnants of pumpkin bread and cookies left on paper plates on the café tables.

  “It’s a long story,” I said. “You might want to sit down yourself.”

  He pulled up a chair, turned it around, and sat, resting his hands on its back. “Okay.”

  Chris, Gus, and Sonny stared at me. Clearly, since I’d gotten them into this mess, it was up to me to explain. As succinctly as possible, I told Jamie about the haunted house tour, Ned Calhoun, and Sweet Sue. When I got to the part where the tour group arrived in the restaurant, he said, “Let’s save the next part for individual interviews when Major Crimes gets here.”

  “Sergeant Flynn is half an hour out,” Howland called from the other room. “Same with the medical examiner.” Our local, part-time, medical examiner was a family practice doctor. This scene was clearly above her pay grade.

  Jamie nodded his acknowledgment and turned back to me. “Who was on this ghost tour? The state police will need statements from everybody. “

  “Uhm, Carla.”

  “Last name?”

  “I don’t know. Harley may know. He may have taken credit cards or reservations or something. A mother and two sons. Joyce Bayer, Kieran, and Will.”