Night of the Living Deed

by E. J. Copperman

  I’d already made a few phone calls. “It has to be authenticated, of course, and sorry, they won’t accept a fourth-grade history teacher’s word. Right now it’s at the New Jersey Historical Society in Newark being examined. But it seems likely that the deed is real, and if it is, I’m going to donate the deed to the New Jersey State Museum.”

  Ned raised his eyebrows. “Not the Smithsonian?”

  “Nah. They have enough Washington stuff. Let New Jersey have a little of its own for a change.”

  Ned smiled. “Not many people would give up the shot at four hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Oh, I could sell it, but this way, I don’t have to worry about it, and I get a great big deduction on my taxes for a good number of years. That’ll come in handy while I try to get the guesthouse off the ground.”

  He gave me the grin that had been my downfall since we’d met. “You’re an interesting person, Alison.”

  “How interesting? Enough to overlook a few . . . miscalculations?”

  Ned’s face lost its look of amusement. And I suddenly remembered Paul was watching, and turned to give him an irritated glance, but he was gone. “You mean that you thought I might be trying to kill you?” Ned asked. “That’s a lot to overlook.”

  I looked at my shoes. “I didn’t really think that,” I mumbled. “I was under stress.”

  “And I was acting like the Captain Ahab of Revolutionary War buffs,” he admitted. “But maybe we need to think about Melissa.”

  “Melissa?” That had taken me by surprise. “What about Melissa?”

  “I think maybe it’s better if her mom isn’t dating her history teacher,” he said. “She’s going to have a hard enough time as the Ghost Girl for a while.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “From what I could see, Ghost Girl is a pretty popular title around here. And she’s Melissa—she lets nothing stand in her way most of the time.”

  We started walking back toward the driveway. “Nonetheless,” Ned went on, “I think given what you’ve just been through, and what you thought I was doing, and the fact that I’m your daughter’s teacher, maybe we need to put the brakes on. For a while.”

  I hate it when men use logic. “For a while,” I agreed. “But there’s one thing I really need to ask.”

  He stood straight and nodded. “Name it.”

  “What is Ned short for?” I asked.

  He looked at me strangely for a moment, and squinted a little, like he was trying to decide if I was real. “Edward,” he said. “Everybody knows that.”

  “I didn’t. Where does the N come from?”

  Ned smiled and shook his head.

  I had barely waved good-bye to Ned when Paul appeared at my shoulder again.

  “There’s something I want to ask. Let’s go inside, and—”

  His abrupt manner had made me turn my head so fast, I almost put a crick in my neck. “Hold on there, Quick Draw!” I said. “I don’t want to go inside. I don’t want to look at all the damage we did, and the repairs I have to make. I realize it was the right thing to do, but after all the work I put in and all the expense I went through, I’m just not ready to face it. Okay? So ask what you want to ask out here.”

  “No, really, Alison,” Paul said. “We’ll just go inside for a second, and—”

  Before I could protest again, my cell phone rang: Mom was calling.

  “I know you’re fine, but I just have to check in and make sure.” She managed to apologize while not actually apologizing.

  I’d filled Mom in briefly last night, but McElone had been standing right next to me, so I hadn’t been able to fully explain to Mom what had happened.

  “Mom, listen. There was something I didn’t tell you about last night.”

  “What? Is Melissa okay?” Her voice immediately rose a half tone.

  “Yes! Mom! Everybody’s fine. It’s just . . .” I turned away from Paul’s inquiring eyes. “I . . . I saw Dad, I think, last night. He sort of saved my life.”

  There was a long silence. She must have been shocked.

  “You mean . . . he didn’t tell you I sent him?” she asked.

  Another long pause. This time, I was shocked.

  “You sent him?”

  “Of course! You were walking into such a dangerous situation all by yourself. So I got in touch with your father and told him to get down there.”

  It was all crashing in on me at once. “What do you mean, you got in touch with him? You can talk to Dad whenever you want?”

  “Well, not whenever. He sort of comes and goes. Luckily, he was around last night.”

  Wait a minute . . . “How did you know where to send him?” I asked my mother. “I didn’t tell you where I was going.”

  “I was tailing you in the Viper,” she said. “You didn’t think I’d just sit home and wait for a phone call, did you?”

  Actually, I had thought exactly that.

  I signed off with Mom after having promised to bring Melissa over for dinner that weekend (and having elicited a promise that she’d explain how to get in touch with Dad). My mind was reeling with all the new information it had to process. I didn’t think it could take much more.

  But Paul, who had been waiting at a discreet distance while I spoke to Mom, had other ideas. He approached as soon as I put the phone back in my pocket. “Come on,” he said. “I have an idea I want to discuss with you. Just come on into the house, and—”

  I almost stamped my foot, something I haven’t done since I was ten years old. “Did I not make myself clear?” I asked. “I’m not ready to go inside yet.”

  Paul’s features softened, partially because of the sun coming out from behind a cloud and diluting his image. “Trust me,” he implored. “Just for a second.”

  I gave in, as I usually do. After all, I’d have to see the mess again sooner or later, if just to assess the cost in materials, labor and time. I wondered if I could hire help on the job, and then wondered anew how the hell I’d pay for it.

  Paul went straight through the door, of course, but I had to open the screen door and then the kitchen door to get inside. I stopped on the threshold and gathered myself; this wasn’t going to be easy.

  “Come on, Alison.” I heard Paul’s voice from inside.

  I stepped into the kitchen, where the walls hadn’t been too badly damaged, I remembered. It was probably the best place to start, but there was no getting around the fact that all the walls would have to come down and be replaced with drywall. “I don’t see why we had to talk inside,” I said to Paul.

  And then I looked.

  There wasn’t so much as a tiny crack in any of the plaster. Everything was exactly as it had been before we started flinging sledgehammers around. No—it was better. Small imperfections I hadn’t been able to sand out for fear of opening too large a hole had been smoothed over. The paint job was perfect.

  Everything was perfect in the kitchen.

  I literally gasped. Then I looked at Paul, grinning and hovering around the ceiling, where my stencil work was perfectly intact. “What happened?” I asked.

  “Come look inside.” He beamed.

  A little unsteady on my feet, I made it into the dining room. Then the living room, the sitting room, the den. . . . Every wall was absolutely pristine. Not so much as a small bump.

  Even the hallway wall, where the three-foot gaping crevasse had started all this trouble. Perfect.

  “How did you do this?” I asked Paul. “The only guys who really know plaster are . . .”

  “I made a few calls,” he said.

  Fifty

  “So this is the place all the fuss was about.” Phyllis Coates had not seen the house since the renovations (by myself and a host of dead artists) were completed. So now, fully furnished and primped for a photo shoot two weeks after Halloween (the changing leaves making the outside shots even more appealing), it was looking as impressive as it ever would. Even the weather was cooperating, with bright mid-November afternoon sunshine flo
oding in through the windows.

  Since Phyllis’s articles on the murders, the arrests of Adam Morris and Bridget Bostero, and the promotion of Anita McElone to detective sergeant had been picked up by some national wire services and posted on the Internet, my little guesthouse had achieved a certain amount of notoriety, and I was determined to exploit it for all it was worth.

  I’d hired a photographer named Spud (he swore his mother gave him the name) to take brochure pictures, and Phyllis, happy to oblige her newest advertiser with a feature article on the house in an upcoming edition of the Chronicle , decided to stop by and see the place for herself.

  “I might call the article ‘Haunted Guesthouse Open for Business,’ ” she joked. “Everybody’s saying there are ghosts here, after all.”

  “What do you think?” I asked her.

  “I’ve learned to believe only what I can see, and that only part of the time,” Phyllis answered.

  “You’re a smart woman.”

  While I showed her the house and Spud snapped away, Phyllis filled me in on the latest news: Both Mayor Bostero (well, former Mayor Bostero, now that she’d been forced to resign) and Adam Morris had been arraigned, and Adam had made a plea bargain that would keep him in jail for at least ten years. Bridget Bostero, as it turned out, was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and couldn’t make bail, which was fine with the judge, since he hadn’t authorized bail to begin with.

  Meanwhile, Kerin Murphy and her husband were separating while she defended herself against obstruction charges. Kerin also gave up the presidency of the PTSO “until this difficult time is behind us.” I was hoping she’d move out of town, but I don’t really have that kind of luck.

  Phyllis asked me whether I’d be interested in writing a column for the Chronicle, and I declined. I had enough to do. But she encouraged me to stay in touch and, as she was leaving, promised to do so herself. She also asked if Melissa would like to deliver papers for her, and I told her to ask again in a couple of years.

  Jeannie and Tony still called pretty much every day, having gotten into the habit. Jeannie’s calls were especially entertaining, as she would never refer to anything the least bit unusual at my house. But whenever she came by, she was tense. When I’d ask her about it, she’d deny everything and tell me I was crazy.

  It’s nice to have friends.

  Maxie, who’d been unusually quiet and often absent in the two weeks since the Halloween insanity, poked her head up through the perfectly repaired window box when Spud and Phyllis were gone. “I thought they’d be never leave,” she whined.

  “What do you care? They can’t see you. You could have made faces at them and otherwise tried to embarrass me to your heart’s content. Assuming you have a heart.”

  She scowled. “You’re really mean to me sometimes,” she said.

  “I told you that crack about never coming near Melissa again was just me being angry,” I reminded her. “I told you that you can talk to her whenever you want, and I’ll even let you be alone in a room with her again once her eyebrows grow all the way back in.”

  “See? Mean.”

  Before I could respond, the doorbell rang, and Maxie looked a little anxious. She’d hadn’t said anything, but lately she seemed to dislike seeing people she wasn’t expecting, and was going outside the house less and less. I thought it was sinking in that unmasking her killer wasn’t going to change her situation—she’d still be a ghost stuck in my house. So I took a deep breath before opening the door, because I didn’t know how she’d react.

  Maxie’s mother, Kitty Malone, looked just as anxious on the other side of the threshold. But I’d told her on the phone that it was really important she come by and, after she’d protested mightily, I’d told her why. She hadn’t believed me when I’d said she could speak to Maxie—and I didn’t blame her—but I wore her down.

  “I’m not sure about this,” Kitty said, but she bravely stepped into the foyer and looked around. “Wow. This place is really beautiful.”

  Maxie, peeking in from the living room, looked astonished. “Oh my God,” she said. “Mommy.” She seemed to regress to about six years old, and she backed up a little in shock, but she didn’t leave the room.

  “Thank you,” I told her mother. “Actually, as much as I hate to admit it, many of the best ideas were Maxie’s. Like painting this room white with navy blue molding.” Maxie didn’t seem to hear that, because she didn’t react at all—normally, she’d do a dance of victory at my admitting she was better than me at something.

  Kitty’s mouth opened a little. “That does sound like Maxie,” she said.

  I led Kitty into the living room, where Maxie seemed unable to move. She stared at her mother. And I believe I saw tears on her cheeks, but the framed painting on the wall behind Maxie, which showed through, might have obscured my view a little.

  “What are you doing?” Maxie asked me.

  “She wants to know why I invited you,” I told Kitty. “I didn’t tell Maxie you were coming.”

  Kitty’s eyes widened. “You mean . . . she really is here?”

  “In the room with us.”

  Kitty sat down on one of the sofas without asking, which was perfectly fine with me; I wanted her to feel at home. “Didn’t she want to see me?”

  Maxie fluttered down from the ceiling to her mother’s side and stared into her eyes. “Tell her I always wanted to see her,” she told me. “I thought she didn’t want to see me.”

  I relayed the message, but Kitty’s eyes narrowed a bit. “How do I know she’s really there?” she asked.

  It was a good question, and one that I hadn’t been able to plan for in advance. But Maxie knew what to do: She flew to the small secretary I’d put in one corner, took out a pen and a pad of paper, and brought it back to the sofa.

  Kitty looked with fascination as the pen, seemingly suspended in midair, wrote, “I’m here, Mommy.” She ran her hand around the pen a couple of times, looking for hidden wires.

  “That’s Maxie’s handwriting,” she said. “She never could write very well in cursive.” And she started to cry, but the tears were those of restoration rather than of sorrow.

  Maxie ran her hand over her mother’s cheek, and Kitty put her hand up to her face, having felt her daughter’s presence. “Oh Maxie,” she said. “My God, I’ve missed you.”

  “Me, too,” came the reply, a little slower as Maxie worked on her penmanship.

  “Are you okay?” Kitty asked, and I watched the pen move over the paper again.

  I didn’t stay to see the reply, but I heard some laughter from both of them as I walked out of the living room. I was going to head for the library, where I was still sorting some books for the shelves (I’d made sure they looked good for Spud, but they weren’t properly categorized), but the doorbell rang again, and this time I was the one startled, because I wasn’t expecting anyone else.

  A little man of about seventy, dressed very nattily in an overcoat and a hat, stood on my doorstep and presented a business card identifying himself as Edmund Rance, representative of Senior Plus Tours.

  “My company helps to provide its clients with special and unique accommodations, particularly on the New Jersey coast.” (That was classy—everybody in New Jersey says “down the shore.”) “We schedule as many as ten tours per season.” Holy mackerel! That could put me on the map! “I have seen some online mentions of this house as a tourist accommodation during the spring and summer months, but I couldn’t find your Web site,” he said.

  “Year-round accommodation,” I corrected. “We’re ready to accommodate people immediately, but the Web site is still under construction.” After all, the photographs had just been taken today. I hadn’t expected guests until April at the earliest, but I could certainly be flexible.

  Rance’s stern expression did not change. “May I come in and inspect the facility?” he asked. He took off his hat, an indication that a gentleman was entering the “facility.”

  I stood aside
and gestured him in, and then I remembered the paranormal family reunion going on in my living room. How could I steer him away from such a central location?

  “Would you prefer to tour the bedrooms first, Mr. Rance?” I asked, leading him away from the living room and toward the stairs.

  “Any order is fine. But I do have one question, Ms. Kerby.”

  “Please, ask away.” I’d given up the expression shoot on Halloween night.

  “There have been rumors, both online and in the town of Harbor Haven, that undead spirits walk the halls of this house.”

  Oh, brother. I knew I shouldn’t have let Maxie loose on those kids, and then let them all in to tear the place apart. They’d mouthed off to their tight-assed parents on Halloween. There went my ten tours a season.

  “Oh, that’s just silly, Mr. Rance,” I told him. “People like to make up stories. There are no such things happening here.”

  But he looked disappointed. “There aren’t?”

  Now I didn’t know what to say. “Um . . . no.”

  Rance put his hat back on. “Then I’m sorry to have wasted your time, Ms. Kerby,” he said. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

  “Wait. I don’t understand. You want a house with ghosts in it?”

  He looked back at me, assessing. “Of course. Without some spectral experience, this is just a house by the beach, isn’t it? If you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “I don’t mind at all.” I turned away from Rance, considered the personal experience going on in the living room, and shouted, “Paul!”

  After an experience (including a game of “keep the hat away from the distinguished old gentleman” that Paul wouldn’t have been able to pull off even a week earlier) that convinced Rance there were, indeed, spirits on the premises, I got a promise of at least five tours of four people or more each for the spring season, and more if there were “paranormal encounters” that could be verified among the guests to bolster word of mouth. Paul nodded in my direction, and I told Rance I could guarantee such visits. Then Rance, given his hat back, smiled a very distinguished smile, almost bowed a little in the direction he imagined Paul to be, and got into a black sedan for his trip back to wherever he’d come from.