The Skeleton Haunts a House

by Leigh Perry

  “I only chatted with her a little while,” Mom said, “but she told me that she was breezing through her courses, which is why she was able to take the time to help Roxanne. Apparently she’s quite brilliant with statistics.”

  “What about personal problems?” Sid asked, following my reasoning. “Madison, you spent time with her.”

  “She didn’t mention anything like that to me. She liked her roommate, gets along with her parents, and doesn’t have a boyfriend or girlfriend, so no problems there.”

  “How about you, Deborah?” he asked. “Did you see signs of anything going on with her?”

  “Sure, Sid, I could tell she was about to go homicidal,” she snapped. “That’s why I kept her around.”

  “Deborah,” Phil said reprovingly. “Nobody is blaming you.”

  “I’m blaming myself, Dad. I hired a murderer and let her loose on the public. Don’t tell me that I’m not being logical. I know that, and I don’t care.” Before any of us could try to comfort or argue with her, she said, “We don’t know what Linda and Kendall talked about in that phone call, or what it was they were going to meet about. When the cops find out, we’ll know why Linda went off the deep end.”

  “You’re probably right,” I said, but it still didn’t feel right. One glance at Sid, and I knew exactly what was going on in his nonexistent brain. “If it’s all the same to you, I think we’re going to stay on the case for now. Something about this smells off. Linda just doesn’t seem like a killer.”

  “Don’t you ever watch the news?” Deborah said. “Every time they catch a killer, his idiot neighbors and stupid family and clueless coworkers bleat about how he seemed like such a nice guy. So this time I’m the clueless coworker.”

  “But—”

  “Georgia, the cops are satisfied so stop trying to prove that you’re smarter than they are.”

  I started to count to ten, but didn’t get past three. “Let’s get this straight. I got involved in this cluster because you asked me to. After all, I’m a lady of leisure. I just have five sections of expository writing to teach every week with all those papers to grade. So of course I was dying for a chance to play detective.”

  “Okay, fine, I get—”

  “But since you did ask me to get involved, I have been trying my best, and I do not believe that girl is guilty. Neither do you.”

  I glared at her, she glared at me, and our glaring might have lasted all night if Mom hadn’t intervened.

  “Before we raise our voices any further,” she said, “let’s consider this logically. Either Linda is guilty or she’s not.”

  Had it been anybody but our mother, Deborah would have snarled at her for stating the obvious, but she managed to control herself and just say, “Okay.”

  “If she’s guilty, it’s not going to hurt for Georgia and Sid to continue their investigation, is it? The worst that could happen is that they’ll find more evidence against her. In fact, that would be a good thing because we’d all rest easier.”

  Deborah nodded.

  “If Linda isn’t guilty, then the only way that she’s going to get out of jail is if the police find the real killer, or at least some evidence that it’s somebody else. Only the police aren’t likely to find anything because they aren’t looking.”

  Deborah nodded again.

  “So in either case, it makes sense for your sister and Sid to stay on the job. Isn’t that right?”

  “Georgia said she was too busy with work,” Deborah muttered.

  “Georgia, do you want to continue this investigation? Because you don’t have to, and you certainly don’t have to prove anything.”

  I wanted to tell her that of course I knew that, but maybe part of me really was trying to prove that I was smart. I didn’t care what the police thought, but I did want Mom and Phil to know it, even if my academic career hadn’t been stellar. Except that if that were my only aim, I’d be writing academic articles, not solving a murder. So why had I gotten involved in the first place?

  Deborah had asked me to investigate, but I could have turned her down. Sid was always eager to snoop, of course, but he’d never make me do something I didn’t want to. I couldn’t pretend I’d been protecting Madison because the easiest way to do that would have been to pull her out of the haunt. Nor could I claim I was selflessly trying to rescue Linda—the world was filled with people being treated unfairly, and I wasn’t rushing to help them. With all that, why was I refusing to give up? I didn’t know what the answer was, but I did know one thing. “I am busy, but I want to do this.”

  “Good enough,” Mom said. “Now since your father and I have plenty of free time until next semester starts, Phil will continue to take care of the cooking, I’ll deal with household chores, and either of us can grade essays if you run short on minutes. And it goes without saying that we’ll help with the detective work if there’s anything we can do.” She looked from one of us to the other. “All right?”

  Deborah and I nodded.

  “Then it’s settled. I’m getting started right now by washing a load of laundry.”

  She bustled out, and Phil ambled after her. Madison stayed where she was, as if afraid that any movement would set Deborah and me off.

  My sister and I weren’t glaring at each other anymore, but we weren’t smiling, either. Finally she said, “I guess Mom’s right. You go ahead and do whatever it is you do.”

  “I’ll try my best.”

  “Okay. I’m going home.” She got up, but stopped long enough to say, “Good chili.”

  “Thanks. Glad you liked it.”

  After she was gone, Sid said, “Whoa. I’ve never known Deborah to apologize so profusely before.”

  “What apology?” Madison said.

  Sid patted her on the shoulder. “Kid, trust me, I’ve known Deborah for most of her life. That was as close as your aunt ever gets to saying she’s sorry.”

  “And she knows I’ve accepted it,” I said.

  “Very graciously, too,” Sid said. “A genuine Hallmark moment.”

  Madison looked back and forth between the two of us, probably trying to decide if we were pulling her leg, but we really weren’t. Deborah and I may not have a greeting card kind of relationship, but we understand each other.

  Madison went to tackle her homework, but when I offered to help Mom with laundry, she told me I had more important things to do. Sid and I ended up back in his attic.

  “Any ideas?” Sid asked.

  “Not a one. You?”

  “Maybe. If Linda isn’t the killer, then the killer is framing her.”

  “And doing a pretty good job of it, too.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The usual reason to frame somebody is to divert suspicion away from oneself, right? But the police didn’t have any suspects, unless you count Scooby-Doo. Who was the killer diverting attention from?”

  “That’s a good question, Sid. Maybe the real killer was nervous, and thought the police would find him if they kept looking.”

  “Possible, but it occurs to me that there are two things that happened as a result of Linda being arrested. One, Roxanne’s screwed on her dissertation.”

  “Why would anybody go to so much trouble to keep Roxanne from getting her Ph.D.?”

  “Anything scandalous in the dissertation? Something somebody wouldn’t want published?”

  “It’s about word use in Romantic Era poetry, so it doesn’t seem likely. Besides if there were anything that was going to cause a stir, Mom would have warned her about it. Dissertations are supposed to be original, but students are steered away from outright controversy.”

  “How about a competitor with a similar project who’s afraid Roxanne will beat him or her to the punch?”

  “Given how long she’s been working on this thing, anybody who
wanted to beat her to the punch could have done so a long time ago.”

  “Then maybe somebody really hates Roxanne. You have to admit, she’s kind of annoying. I’ve never even met her face-to-face, and she annoys me.”

  “All grad students are annoying when they get this close to finishing their dissertation. When I was in the middle of mine, I went out to dinner with a friend of mine the day she got a book contract—an actual ‘I’ve sold a book to a New York publisher and it’s going to be published’ moment—and all I talked about was my research topic. If that had been a viable murder motive, I’d be dead.”

  “Still,” Sid insisted, “there might be something in Roxanne’s background to make somebody despise her.”

  “Okay, we can check into that, but even if we find an enemy, that won’t explain why somebody would frame Linda. Why not just kill Linda? Or Roxanne, for that matter.”

  “To cover his tracks. Nobody would expect a plot so complex.”

  “That’s a point.” I know I didn’t expect it to be true. “What’s the other result?”

  “I bet the haunt will reopen.”

  “Weren’t we thinking the murderer wanted to close the haunt?”

  “Right, right.” He drummed his finger bones against the desk. “What if the secret McQuaid heir killed Kendall to get the haunt closed so he can claim the property? The Quintet found out about it, but won’t go to the police for fear of besmirching the fair name of McQuaid. So they’re framing Linda to get the haunt reopened without the secret heir coming into it, so the heir will slink away in disgrace.”

  “How did they get the bloody gloves?”

  More drumming. “One of them broke into the heir’s hotel room and stole them.”

  “Then why frame poor Linda?”

  “She beat one of the Quintet kids out for the math award at PHS? Or maybe they know Roxanne and think it’ll be funny if she doesn’t ever get her doctorate. Or maybe—”

  “Sid, just stop. I’m not saying your theories don’t make sense.” They didn’t, but I wasn’t saying so. “The thing is that we don’t need more theories—we need some facts or evidence or proof.”

  “Yeah, I guess we do.” He started drumming again, and I thought I saw his bones loosen a touch.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, patting his scapula. “I don’t know what we can find that the cops didn’t, but—”

  “Georgia, if you say that one more time, I’m going to bite you. Haven’t we solved murders before? If you don’t take your abilities seriously, at least take mine seriously!”

  “I’m sorry, Sid,” I said, surprised by his vehemence. “I don’t mean to disrespect you, but this murder feels different from the other ones. Then there were things we knew that the cops didn’t. Now it seems as if they know everything we know, plus they’ve got the forensics and all that going for them.”

  “But with all that, they’ve still got the wrong person, don’t they?”

  “We don’t know for sure . . .”

  He snapped his teeth threateningly.

  “Yes, they’ve got the wrong person.”

  “Which proves that we already know something they don’t, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay then. Now you go get some sleep, and I’ll troll the Web and see what else I can find that the cops missed.”

  “If it’s there, you’ll find it, Sherlock,” I said, and leaned over him to plant a kiss on his skull. Kissing bare bone is an odd sensation, but no more so than when I kissed my first car when nobody was looking, and my car didn’t smile afterward the way Sid did.

  I followed his advice, and though I didn’t wake up inspired Thursday morning, at least I was well rested, which was a good thing because the first news of the day wasn’t promising. Sid had prepared more dossiers overnight, this time on Roxanne and Linda. Roxanne did so little other than work that she hadn’t had time to create enemies, unless you counted the person who claimed she’d co-opted her carrel at the library. Linda was the opposite, with lots of on-campus activities, but she seemed well liked. In other words, Sid had found nothing that would show why somebody would want to prevent Roxanne’s doctorate or get Linda thrown in jail.

  Fortunately for my peace of mind, the day got more interesting later on. After my first class, I received a text from Deborah.

  Beatrice called. Haunt reopening Friday. Meeting with crew and cast @McHades @6. Tell Madison.

  Before I could respond, she sent another.

  Want to come?

  I was checking my schedule to make sure the timing would work when yet another appeared:

  Bring Sid.

  If she and my parents had that much confidence in our detective work, maybe I should, too. I texted back that we’d be there, then let Madison and Sid know that I’d pick them up at five thirty.

  17

  Phil was right about the news of Linda’s arrest having spread. When I went to the adjunct office after class, I was immediately approached by people asking if the rumor was true. Once I gave the bare-bones account of what had happened, I claimed I had more work to do than I actually did and got busy on my laptop. Of course, that made no difference to Sara Weiss. She showed up a little after eleven, and even before she sat down, said, “Is it true?”

  I was tempted to mess with her by pretending not to know what she was talking about, but since she might know something useful, I didn’t want to annoy her. “About the arrest? Yeah, the police arrested a sophomore named Linda Zaharee for the haunted house murder.”

  “Handcuffs and everything? In your parents’ office?” She sounded aggrieved that it had happened in a place to which she had no access.

  I nodded.

  “Did she resist arrest?”

  “There were four cops. What could she have done?”

  “I don’t know. She could have still had the murder weapon.”

  “The baseball bat was left at McHades Hall,” I said without thinking.

  “How do you know? Do you have a connection at the police department? Did they release more details?”

  Great. If I told her I’d been one of the first on the scene, she’d want to know all the gory details, and there’d been more gore than I wanted to remember. So I hedged. “That’s what somebody told me. What have you heard?”

  For the next twenty minutes, Sara bombarded me with rumors, facts, and total speculation mixed together indiscriminately. I know she must have breathed during that time—she wasn’t Sid—but I’d have been hard-pressed to say when she had the opportunity. Unfortunately she had no useful facts except the fact that the ninja, the cowboy, and Scooby-Doo were still unidentified. She wound it up with, “I’m just glad they’ve got the killer behind bars. I know I’ll sleep a lot easier tonight.”

  “I don’t think Linda is guilty.”

  “Of course she’s guilty.”

  “I don’t know her well, but I taught her, and my sister, mother, and daughter know her. She doesn’t strike us as a killer.”

  Sara gave me a pitying look. “Good grief, Georgia, don’t tell me she pulled the wool over your eyes? You can tell from her picture in the paper that she’s a stone-cold killer. She’s got dead eyes, like a shark. Why do you think she worked in that haunted house? I mean, what kind of weirdo spends all night scaring people?”

  “People like my daughter and my sister.”

  I thought that might give her pause, but I hadn’t reckoned on Sara’s insatiable hunger for gossip. “Really? Did they see the body? Was there a lot of blood?”

  I’m not often speechless, but that time I was. How tactless could one person be?

  “Hey, Georgia!” a voice behind me said. “Are you ready for our lunch date?”

  It was Brownie Mannix, and as far as I knew, we hadn’t made a lunch date, but when he gave me a wink, I got the idea.

  “Is it that
time already?” I said, packing up my things as quickly as I could. “See you later, Sara.” I think she was starting to ask if she could join us when we went through the office door, moving just short of a run until we were sure she wouldn’t follow. Then we slowed down to a more normal pace.

  “Thanks for the save, Brownie.”

  “No problem. It looked as if you were ready to slug her, and though that would have been entertaining, I didn’t want you getting into trouble.”

  “It’s my own fault. I answered a question about the arrest in my mother’s office, and that got her started. Then I made the mistake of admitting that I know something about the murder that she doesn’t.”

  “I wonder what she’d say if she knew I was in the haunt when it happened?”

  “Have you ever seen a lamprey?”

  He laughed.

  “Anyway, the least I can do after my rescue is buy you lunch.”

  “Thanks, but one of the perks of having the show right outside campus is that I can eat at the cook shack for free.”

  “Another time?”

  “Or you could join me instead. It’s not fancy, but Stewpot is a good cook, and Thursday is chicken and dumplings day. Plus you can’t beat the price.”

  “Isn’t it against the rules for you to sneak me in?”

  “My mother owns the carnival.”

  “In that case, I would be delighted.”

  As we walked across the quad to the main campus gate, then onto Elm Street where the carnival was set up, I admit to curiosity about the people Brownie worked with outside of academia. Carnivals have always struck me as being contradictory. On one hand, people take their kids there for fun and excitement. On the other, most people I know assume that the carnies running those merry-go-rounds and Ferris wheels were at best uneducated, and at worst unsavory. I had no idea of what to expect.