I felt it had to be clarified. “He was already dead?”
Cassidy nodded vigorously. “Way dead. But his eyes were open. He looked surprised.”
Given Richard’s warnings about her safety, I asked Cassidy if she was taking precautions for herself. “I had this bodyguard for a little while, but I got tired of having someone looking over my shoulder all the time,” she said. “The cops said I probably didn’t need anything like that. They figure Richard got killed over something that wasn’t related to my case, and besides, they think I’ll be in jail really soon and there’s no need to worry. For them.”
Paul urged me to press the point, no doubt so he could report back to his brother. “Well, I think you need to be careful,” I said. I didn’t want to scare her.
“I’m more worried about the trial,” Cassidy said. “They say it’ll start again next week.”
There wasn’t much more I could think of to ask. I looked at Paul. “I think we’ve done enough,” he said. I thanked Cassidy for meeting me and gave her my investigator business card. I think in my years of investigating, I’ve given out maybe fifteen. I have plenty more in my desk at home.
Cassidy left, and I put on my earbuds, which were plugged into my phone. It makes me look somewhat less crazy when I talk to people who aren’t universally visible.
“So what do you think?” I asked Paul.
“I think Cassidy made an excellent point. We really do need to talk to the New Brunswick police. Luckily, they’re only a few blocks from here. You won’t even have to move your car.”
#
It took the better part of an hour to get Detective Barnett Kobielski to talk to me. I hadn’t called ahead for an appointment, wasn’t known to the New Brunswick police at all, and at best was a pest of a private investigator who was going to ask him questions he didn’t want to answer and waste his time. Aside from that, I’m sure he was pleased to meet with me.
“I have six minutes,” he said as he sat down behind a crowded, messy desk. It was a refreshing sight in a police station. Lieutenant McElone’s desk would look positively ravaged if there were so much as a paper clip askew. “Talk.”
“I’ve been asked to look into the death of Richard Harrison, and I know you investigated the case,” I said. “I’d appreciate it if you could get me up to speed because I was just hired yesterday and there’s kind of a time factor.”
“He’ll still be dead.” Cops love nothing better than to pretend that the crimes they see don’t affect them at all. Kobielski wasn’t selling it especially well.
“Maybe so, but I’m working under a deadline from my client.” That sounded sort of official, if vague.
“Who is your client?” Kobielski asked.
“I’d prefer not to give out the name,” I told him. “A family member of the deceased, okay?”
“You realize I’m not required to give out any information that isn’t part of the public record, right?” Kobielski leaned back in his chair. Indifference to a private investigator was something he could sell quite effectively.
“Then tell me what’s on the public record,” I said. “Where’s the report on Richard Harrison’s murder?”
“Ask for it in records,” he said with very little inflection. “Downstairs.” He pushed his chair forward again and made a show of looking over something in the morass of paper on his desk.
“Come on, Detective. What does it hurt you to tell me what you know about this? Why make me read the basic facts on a sheet you filled out the next day? I’m not getting in your way. The county prosecutor took this case away from you anyway.”
I knew that last part would irritate the detective, and I saw Paul, who was hovering over my right shoulder, wince a little when I said it. But I thought a guy like Kobielski might respond well to the perceived affront.
And for once I was right. “They came in here the next day and took everything we had,” he groused. “I get Major Crimes after me all the time, and I understand that. But they didn’t even give us a couple of days to find the most logical suspects. I could have closed this thing in less than a week. Somebody wanted the county on it.”
When in doubt, commiserate with the aggrieved. “Who would want that?” I asked.
“That’s a good question, lady.” Kobielski scratched behind his left ear. I got the sense it was a sign he was thinking. “There was no reason for them to get involved so soon. I had a pretty good idea of what was going on in that room when the guy got himself clobbered.”
Paul lowered down a foot and moved closer to Kobielski. Solving Richard’s murder was going to be easy because Kobielski, it seemed, had already done it.
“What happened?” I asked. Seemed like Kobielski needed the setup.
“Harrison was staying in the Heldrich on Livingston Ave.,” he said. “Room six-fifteen. The door showed no signs of forced entry, but he was completely turned away from the killer and kind of hunched over the desk in his room. So it looked like whoever it was had a key to the room and didn’t make a noise coming in.”
“Was he just so engrossed in his laptop that he might not have heard the door open?” I asked.
“There was no laptop in the room,” Kobielski said. “I figured he was working on a tablet or something in his car, but I don’t think the county cops found anything. They don’t tell me inside stuff like that.” The wound was obviously still fresh.
“Whoever killed him must have taken the laptop,” Paul said.
“What’s weird to me is that he was killed with the iron from the closet in the hotel,” I said, mostly because Paul had pointed it out. “If someone was sneaking into the room with the intention of beating him to death, wouldn’t he have brought something with him? This guy seems like he was improvising.”
Kobielski looked at me with a little more respect than I deserved, but that was because he didn’t know Paul was still about a foot and a half from him. He leaned forward, and his head actually went into Paul’s a little. If only that was an effective form of mind reading, we’d be able to solve every case in no time flat.
“That’s not even the weird part,” he said in a stage whisper. “The iron was still in his hotel room. Whoever bopped him on the head brought in their own iron.”
You know that scratch-the-record sound they use in commercials when something doesn’t make sense? I swear I heard that. “Their own iron? They brought an iron specifically to kill Richard Harrison with?”
“That’s what I’m saying, and that’s why it’s simple to figure out who killed him.” Kobielski sat back in his chair, satisfied grin planted firmly on his face.
“Who?” Some guys just have to have the straight line.
“The hotel maid,” he said.
Chapter 14
“The hotel maid?” My mother looked at me as if wondering whether I needed a nice bowl of chicken soup and some rest. “He thinks Richard was killed by the hotel maid? What possible motivation could she have to kill him with a steam iron?”
“It doesn’t make sense,” I said. We were in the den at the guesthouse, having been banished from the kitchen by Melissa, who was making a lasagna and could not be interrupted. My mother taught her to cook, but now the pupil had eclipsed the master. Mom didn’t seem to think that was sad. “None of the staff in the hotel would have known Richard well enough to want to kill him. He’d been there a few weeks, but mostly he was in an office or the courthouse. He didn’t stay in the hotel except at night.”
“That’s right.” Richard was standing just a few inches off the floor, legs mostly encased in a sofa whose other end boasted my husband. Luckily Josh didn’t know Richard was there and wouldn’t much have minded if he’d known. He’s so used to these one-sided conversations now that he’s become really good at figuring out what the invisible (to him) people have said. I don’t have to recap nearly as much as I used to. “I didn’t know one name aside from the evening desk clerk, whose name was . . . Sam, maybe?”
Let’s be charitable and assume
that Richard’s memory lapse was due to his still being recently departed and not because he was imperious and superior. He was Paul’s brother, and Paul was neither of those things.
“Okay,” Mom said. “We can assume it wasn’t the maid unless Sam put her up to it. So where does that leave us? Why does the detective think that’s what happened?”
“Because it fits his set of facts and it’s the easiest solution that does so,” Paul said. His quiet tone bore some authority, and he was avoiding eye contact, looking mostly at the floor. “It leaves us with two murders to consider and a very large pool of suspects we have not yet interviewed.”
He was right about that. You could book a cruise ship with the number of people who could have killed Keith Johnson in the Cranbury Bog, and that was compounded by the fact that Paul had been unable so far to locate Keith on the Ghosternet. But luckily Kobielski had given us a few details we hadn’t already known about Richard’s murder, and that helped us eliminate some suspects from consideration.
“Keith Johnson’s son, Braden, has a verifiable alibi for the night you were killed, Richard,” Paul told his brother. “So do his business partner and his wife. His daughter, Erika, has an alibi, but it’s just that she was home alone. And that doesn’t take into account the possibility that the two murders were committed by at least two separate people.”
I heard some clanging of pots in the kitchen but didn’t react because Liss doesn’t like it when you assume something has gone wrong. Because it almost always hasn’t. She would no doubt be out shortly; she hates missing a conference on an investigation.
“I don’t think we should be concentrating on my situation,” Richard said. “Cassidy is still alive and needs our help. There’s very little that can be done that would make the slightest difference in my circumstances.”
I can’t say why, but that struck me as incredibly odd. “Don’t you care who killed you?” I asked him. “That’s the worst thing one person can do to another. Doesn’t it bother you to know somebody wanted you dead?”
Josh smiled a little. He loves it when I get assertive.
“I wonder about it, but it should not be the priority at the moment,” Richard answered, back as straight as a two-by-four. Or if he had one stuck down his pants. “I have literally all the time in the world after Keith Johnson’s killer is unmasked and Cassidy is out of danger.”
“I am not convinced Cassidy is in any immediate peril,” Paul said. “She has been under suspicion and out on bail for months now, and there has been no indication anyone is trying to do her harm. Investigating your murder might help us solve the other.”
“Enough,” Richard said. “I will not hear of it.” He stared at Paul.
“Very well,” my friend said.
I wasn’t standing for that. We needed to investigate Richard’s murder if we wanted to figure out the whole puzzle, and now that I was in for one investigation, both seemed only natural. Paul could curl up at Richard’s supposedly wilting gaze, but I didn’t have to. “It makes sense to do things Paul’s way,” I told Richard. “I’ve found that he really has a good plan most of the time if not all the time.” Paul did not glance in my direction.
“Really?” Richard said.
“Really,” I answered. Richard saw the look on my face and turned toward Paul.
Richard began to argue the point with his younger brother (who wasn’t putting up that much of a fight, I thought) as my cell phone buzzed. I took it out to find a text message from Madame Lorraine: No sign of Paul Harrison yet. Is it possible you meant George Harrison? It was best to resist answering right away because having Madame Lorraine as an aggrieved party would probably end up with us in a witches’ duel I would undoubtedly lose, not being a witch. I stuck the phone back into my pocket, then decided to take it out again and text back: Have found Paul Harrison. Thank you for your help.
Foolishly, I thought that would end it with Madame Lorraine.
I was distracted by my father floating in through the front room and announcing that Jeannie, Tony, and their two children had arrived. He needn’t have bothered, since I immediately heard their minivan roll up the gravel driveway almost to my back door and the unpacking procedure begin.
It took a good five minutes of Paul and Richard hashing out their priorities and Paul finally acquiescing to Richard’s wishes before Jeannie was, from the sound of it, herding her brood through my kitchen, where she had undoubtedly assumed I’d be (I spend a lot of time in there for someone who doesn’t cook at all), and out the swinging door into the den.
Since it was June, there wasn’t the shedding of many layers of clothing we’d been accustomed to a few months earlier. Oliver, Jeannie’s elder child, was now a three-year-old and rushing from place to place in search of new things to discover and possibly destroy. Their daughter, Molly, who was determined not to be Oliver and so was already walking at a year old, was less steady on her feet and not as bent on causing havoc. She looked around the room; saw at least Mom, Josh, and me (I have a feeling very young children can see ghosts based on Oliver’s occasional reactions); and stopped, maybe feeling a bit overwhelmed despite having seen all of us many times before.
“Who are these people?” Richard wanted to know. “Were you expecting them?” I wasn’t sure if he was nervous about them being in the room with him or just upset about a brood of middle-class New Jerseyans descending upon him when he was trying to organize a murder investigation—or at least watch as his brother did so.
Naturally I didn’t answer him directly. Tony gets the whole ghost thing and is fairly down with it, although he is nervous around Maxie, who luckily wasn’t in the room at the moment. Maxie used to think (in the pre-Everett era) that Tony was cute, and Tony, married to my best friend and also still alive, did not respond as she might have hoped.
Jeannie, on the other hand, refuses to deal with the ghosts in any way, shape, or form. She is living under the delusion that I advertise a haunted guesthouse because I am a genius marketer (if only) and am running a brilliant scam on the people who come to my house to experience it. This despite her having seen things fly across the room, walls be destroyed, and other assorted unexplainable phenomenon. That’s Jeannie, the Napoleon of denial.
“They are friends, Richard,” Paul informed his brother. “There is no reason to be concerned.”
There were plenty of reasons to be concerned, but Jeannie and her family were none of them. I just feel it’s best to point that out.
Melissa walked out of the kitchen, from which a delicious aroma was already emanating. She surveyed the room, picked out Molly among the crowd of living and less-living entities, and walked over to pick her up. “Hi, Molly!” she cooed to the little girl. “What’s new?”
Molly, who might be able to say “Ma” on a good day, just gurgled a little and smiled at her pal.
“In any event,” Paul went on, “if we are concentrating our efforts on Keith Johnson’s death, we are going to need a police report from the Cranbury officers who first entered the scene and whatever has been generated by the Middlesex County prosecutor’s office. Are those in your files, Richard?”
Richard said they were, and Paul instructed him to wrest the laptop out of Maxie’s hands or—less likely to cause an international incident—to ask Maxie to find those files and print them out on the printer I keep in a corner of the movie room for guests who can’t completely disengage even when on vacation. Richard and Paul exited via the ceiling because Paul has had considerably more experience dealing with Maxie.
Jeannie unpacked her massive diaper bag, which had enough supplies for the baby population of Topeka, Kansas, and watched Melissa swing Molly in her arms. If it had been Oliver at that age, Jeannie would no doubt have been instructing Liss on the proper baby-swinging method approved by the American Academy of Pediatrics. In fact, I’m fairly sure she did deliver that lecture on more than one occasion. But now with a second child her parenting style had become, let’s say, more relaxed.
&nbs
p; “She looks so cute with Molly,” she said to me. “Melissa’s going to be a great mom.”
I inhaled sharply, then let it out, realizing Jeannie meant that to be a long-term compliment.
“Of course she will,” my mother piled on. “That girl will be amazing at whatever she decides to do.”
Not actually objecting to this meeting of the Melissa Kerby Admiration Society, I did try to steer the conversation back to something more present day. I looked at Tony. “Have you found me a steel beam guy for that hole in my ceiling yet?” I asked.
Tony, who hadn’t examined the gaping hole in my den as often as my father (strictly because Dad has more frequent opportunities), reflexively looked up at the spot. “It’s not that I can’t find someone to do the work,” he reminded me. “I could do it myself. The problem is that you don’t want to pay for it.”
“That’s not true,” I protested. “I don’t mind paying for the work. I just mind paying that much for the work.” The last estimate had been for four thousand dollars. I’d searched through every sofa cushion in the house and so far had $1.38.
“So we’re at a stalemate,” Tony said. “You know I’m not gouging you, Alison. I have to pay my crew. I’m not taking a dime on the job.”
“Of course I know you’re not gouging me. But you know I don’t have that much lying around, and I’m not taking out an equity loan on the place.”
Tony shrugged. We each knew the other’s reasoning. There just wasn’t anything either of us could do about it.
Paul came phasing through the den wall wearing a light windbreaker over his T-shirt. That indicated he had something small or flat hidden in his clothes. Sure enough, once in the den he looked for a spot out of Jeannie’s line of sight—not that it would have mattered, since she would have just rationalized—and pulled out a fairly thin sheaf of papers.
That was the moment Jeannie scooped Oliver off the floor and ran at top speeds for the downstairs bathroom, a move every parent of a three-year-old knows all too well. It opened up the room for conversation because Tony just lets this stuff wash off his back and he was over at the exposed beam examining the bullet damage with my father. Tony didn’t know Dad was there, but did that really matter?
The Hostess With the Ghostess Page 11