Haunted Homicide

by Lucy Ness

  “Oh, this.” Patricia fingered the bruise and leaned nearer. “Don’t tell the others. There’s no way they’d understand not having a professional in to do the job. But some of us are more self-sufficient than others. I’m sure you understand.” She gave me a conspiratorial wink. “I was installing a new J-trap in the sink in my downstairs bathroom and the screwdriver slipped.”

  “Do you need ice?”

  She waved away my concern. “I could use a couple of those cookies, though,” she said and when she leaned forward to snatch a couple cookies off Danny’s dish, her sleeve rode up and I saw there was a bruise on her arm, too.

  Dangerous things, screwdrivers.

  Gracie came in next looking appropriately solemn in gray pants and a thundercloud-colored sweater. Agnes followed. Like the others, I was sure she’d been in bed when I called and had dressed in a hurry. That would explain why she was wearing a lovely beige suit, a string of pearls—and pink fuzzy bunny slippers.

  The last person to arrive was Valentina Hanover, the one member of the board I’d never met. Valentina, the club secretary, was in Europe when I interviewed for the job, and in fact, according to what she’d told me when I called her about Muriel’s passing, she’d just returned. I’d caught her at the airport just as she was picking up her luggage.

  She was younger than the others, a lithe, elegant woman with wide dark eyes, inky hair, and dusky skin. Her makeup was perfect. Her jewelry was tasteful. She traveled in style—white linen suit that was as crisp and as unwrinkled as if it had just come from the cleaners, expensive handbag, stilettoes that would have made me scream in pain within three minutes of slipping them on. Looking that good and that fresh after traveling a few thousand miles should be illegal. Valentina pulled it off like a pro.

  I brought a carafe of coffee and some cups to the table.

  “We should be serving you.” To prove it, Valentina took the carafe from me and shooed me into the nearest chair. She filled coffee cups and passed them around. “You’ve had a horrible shock, Avery.”

  “Terrible thing.” Gracie’s eyes welled. “Terrible, terrible thing.”

  I couldn’t even begin to tally how much coffee I’d had since I discovered Muriel’s body, but when Valentina handed me a cup I accepted it and sipped. If I was thinking straight, if I cared, I would have been worried that I wouldn’t sleep for a week. The way it was, I was pretty sure it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to sleep anytime soon, anyway, not with the nightmare image of Muriel’s dead body stuck in my head.

  I glanced around the table at the women. Their eyes were sad, their gazes were fixed on their cups, as if looking deep enough into the black liquid might provide some answers. “The police are going to want to talk to each of you,” I told them.

  “Talk? To us?” Gracie gulped.

  “Of course,” Patricia said.

  “I’m afraid I won’t be able to help them,” Valentina cooed.

  “I can’t imagine why.” By way of emphasizing her point, Agnes harrumphed.

  “You all knew her well,” I pointed out. “And the police are naturally going to want your input.”

  “I hope that Sergeant Alterman interviews me.” Gracie had obviously met the sergeant on her way to the dining room, and now she flapped a hand on her chest, like a cartoon character showing a wildly beating heart. “He’s a looker!”

  Patricia rolled her eyes.

  What they didn’t know was that I’d talked to Sergeant Alterman too, just minutes before they arrived. I knew something I hadn’t been able to tell them when I talked to each of them on the phone earlier.

  I cleared my throat and did my best to force the words out from behind the lump of emotion that blocked my breath. “She was . . .” I coughed. “The police are sure Muriel was murdered.”

  I don’t need to report how they responded, to talk about the gasps, the tears, the moans. It was Valentina who came to her senses first. She clutched her hands together on the table in front of her and looked me in the eye.

  “How can they be sure?” she asked.

  “They’ll give you the details.” I looked over my shoulder when I said this, out to the hallway, where now and again, we could see a uniformed police officer come up from the basement and head outside or a crime scene tech come in the door with an equipment case in hand. “What they told me was that it was obvious Muriel had died somewhere else, that her body had been dragged over to the basement door and . . .” It was nearly too painful to put into words. “Just tossed down.”

  There were more tears, more sobs, and there was nothing I could do but let them cry themselves out. When they were done, I said, “So maybe we should talk about this before the police question all of us. What do any of you know? Who would want Muriel dead?”

  At that time and in that place, the last thing I expected to hear was a laugh, but laugh Patricia did. “Anyone who ever met her,” she said.

  Accurate or not, the comment was callous, and her fellow board members told Patricia so, but rather than be penitent, Patricia sat up straight and sent a laser look around the table from woman to woman.

  “Oh, come off it, girls! Every single one of us knows what a mean, nasty person Muriel was. There’s no use pretending otherwise now that she’s gone. Talk about revisionist history! Agnes, all you’ve wanted your whole life was to be president of the club, and when Muriel got the position, well, you tried to hide it, but we all could tell how upset you were.”

  “Upset, maybe,” Agnes admitted. “But that doesn’t mean—”

  “And Valentina.” Patricia swung her gaze that way. “We all knew how much Muriel disliked you. She never thought you were good enough for the club. You were Bob Hanover’s secretary at the bank, and if Bob hadn’t divorced his first wife, and you hadn’t married Bob and his millions, there’s no way you would have ever been accepted as a member here.”

  To this, Valentina didn’t say a word. She just sat, as still and as cold as an ice sculpture.

  “And you, Gracie.” Patricia was next to Gracie and she patted the older woman’s hand, not as accusatory now as she was consoling. “It’s no secret that Muriel wanted you to resign as club historian. She thought you were off your game.”

  “Oh come on!” Gracie snorted. “Let’s not be so polite about it. She didn’t think I was off my game, she thought I was off my rocker! That I was too old to know what I was doing.”

  Patricia nodded. “Exactly. So you see, if someone wants to know who might have killed Muriel, you all had reasons.”

  “Don’t leave yourself off the list, Patricia,” Agnes snapped.

  “All right. I admit it.” Like she was surrendering, Patricia threw her hands in the air. “I didn’t get along with Muriel. The woman was hidebound and old-fashioned. I want to see this club grow and flourish. I don’t want it to disappear. If Muriel would have just listened to me and opened the club up to be more inclusive—”

  “It’s never going to happen,” Agnes mumbled.

  “You know how she treated me because she thought I was from some lower class than she was. Just a secretary,” Valentina added. “If we had more regular people here as members rather than just the Portage Path elite, she would have treated them just as badly.”

  “She would have gotten over it,” Patricia insisted. “It is, after all, how all progress is made. This club is a dinosaur, and if we were more inclusive—”

  “That’s what you said yesterday.” Believe me, I didn’t mean to sound like I was pointing fingers, but the memory came back at me and the words just fell out of my mouth. “When you and Muriel were arguing in the lobby while we waited for Jack Harkness to arrive. Patricia, you said something about being more inclusive, and Muriel, she said—”

  “Over my dead body!” The way Agnes breathed the words, her voice sounded like it came from beyond the grave.

  “Oh my!” Gracie pi
cked at the white linen tablecloth with nervous fingers.

  “She said that?” Valentina gasped.

  “It’s not like it actually meant anything,” Patricia insisted. “It’s just a thing people say. And besides . . .” She tucked her hands in her lap. “Just because Muriel said what she said doesn’t mean I killed her. Let’s not forget, Muriel was gunning for Avery, too.”

  When they protested, I shushed them all with a wave of both hands. “According to Agnes,” I said, “Muriel wanted her granddaughter to have my job. So . . .” I looked from woman to woman. “Why didn’t she get it?”

  Agnes’s chin came up. “Because we didn’t let her get it.”

  “Because you’re better qualified,” Patricia added.

  “And a much nicer person,” Gracie put in.

  Agnes made a face. “Although you were the only one here after hours, Avery. The police are sure to make a note of that.”

  “A note of what?”

  Sergeant Alterman could be stealthy. None of us had heard him come into the room. At the same time I wondered how much he’d heard, I gave him as much of a smile as I could muster. “What can we do for you?”

  “You can cancel any activities you have tomorrow.”

  Far be it from me to tell him I’d been so busy—what with setting up the Lilac Lounge for Jack’s use, and attending a chamber of commerce meeting, and finding a dead body in the basement—I had no idea what was on the calendar for the next day.

  As if I did and just needed to confirm it, I walked out of the dining room and over to my desk near the front door and Sergeant Alterman trailed along.

  I tapped the keyboard to make my computer come alive and clicked my way through to the right program.

  The next day’s schedule was completely empty.

  I closed down the program before Alterman could see and realize how pathetic it was.

  “I’ll take care of it,” I told him. “In the morning.”

  This was enough to satisfy him. At least for now. He leaned back against the wall and folded his arms over his chest. So much had happened since I’d found Muriel’s body, I hadn’t had much of a chance to check out Sergeant Alterman. Now I saw that aside from that dark hair and those dark eyes I’d noticed earlier, he had an appealing face. He wasn’t exactly handsome. His nose was a little crooked and there was a bulge on the bridge of it that told me he’d had it broken a time or two. His mouth was a little big. So were his ears. He was . . . I took a moment to try and define the impression I got from the man . . . interesting. Sergeant Alterman was interesting looking. Somewhere along the way, he’d taken off his raincoat. He was wearing khaki pants and a dark golf shirt and anyone who didn’t know who he was or why he was there might have thought he was just passing the time there at PPWC.

  He wasn’t.

  He gave an eagle-eyed glance toward the dining room. “How are they taking the news?”

  “As well as can be expected, I suppose,” I told him. “The women here at the club have known one another for years. A lot of them grew up together, went to school together. It’s not easy to lose a friend, and when one of them dies the way Muriel did . . .” A shiver raced across my shoulders. “They’ll be all right. They’re tougher than they look.”

  The expression that crossed his face wasn’t quite a smile. “How about you?”

  I would have stood right there and lied to the man, told him I was fine, thank you very much, if at that moment, a team from the medical examiner’s office didn’t walk up the basement steps carrying a stretcher with a black body bag on it.

  My throat clutched and silently, side by side, Alterman and I watched them walk out the door.

  “Who else has keys?” I don’t think it was an accident that he saved the question for the exact moment the door closed behind the men taking the body outside. Maybe he wanted to catch me when my guard was down. Maybe he was doing his best to distract me, and if that was the case, I appreciated it.

  I swung around to face him. Standing this close, it was the first I realized that I was a titch taller than him. “Well, I guess . . .” I could stand there and keep trying to sound like I knew what I was talking about, or I could level with the guy. Alterman’s dark eyes were perceptive, his gaze was steady without being aggressive. From what I’d seen of him, he was straightforward and plain talking. The kind of man who appreciated the truth and didn’t have time for anything else.

  “Today . . .” I happened to glance at the clock on the wall. It was three thirty in the morning. “Yesterday was my first day on the job,” I told him. “I don’t have all the answers you need.”

  Again, he looked toward the dining room. “But they might.”

  When he went to talk to the board, I trailed along. He hadn’t told me not to, and besides, I was curious to hear what the member of the board would have to say—about Muriel, about their relationships with Muriel.

  “Ladies.” Alterman nodded a greeting and when Gracie waved him into a chair, he declined. In spite of the time, he looked fresh and eager. “I was wondering if you could tell me who has keys. I mean, besides Ms. Morgan here. I know she lives upstairs.”

  “And Muriel had keys, of course,” Gracie put in.

  “Well, we all do,” Agnes reminded Gracie and told Alterman. “All the members of the board.”

  “And Brittany!” With one finger, Patricia gave the table an authoritative tap. “Brittany Pleasance,” she explained, both for my sake and for Alterman’s. “The last business manager. I remember Muriel saying something about it just a couple days ago. She was looking for Brittany’s key to the front door and couldn’t find it.”

  Alterman took a notebook out of his pocket and wrote this down. “And when did she leave her job here?”

  This, they had to think about.

  “Three months?” Valentina ventured.

  “More like four, I think,” Agnes put in. “It must be that long. We did without a manager for a while. Muriel insisted she could handle all the details of the club herself.”

  “And when that didn’t work,” Patricia said, “that’s when we ran the ad and that’s when we found Avery.”

  “And this Ms. Pleasance, why did she leave?” Alterman wanted to know.

  “Didn’t want to.” Gracie shook her head. “She told me as much herself the day she cleaned out her desk.”

  Patricia looked at Agnes, Agnes looked at Valentina. Valentina drew in a breath. “Muriel made Brittany’s life pure misery,” she said. “She was demanding—”

  “Rude,” Gracie added.

  “Accusatory,” Patricia said.

  “Brattish,” Agnes declared.

  “The poor woman finally couldn’t stand it any longer.” Valentina shook her head. “Brittany, well, it’s sad to say she wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box, but her heart was in the right place. She was eager, and she tried hard to please. It was a shame to see her go.”

  “She was a good worker. So why did Ms. Sadler make her life . . .” Though something told me he didn’t have to, that he had a mind like a steel trap, he consulted his notes. “A pure misery?”

  This time, Valentina looked at Agnes, and Agnes looked at Patricia.

  Gracie was the one who spoke up. “It’s not helping to pussyfoot around,” she told the other ladies. “We need to lay it on the line for this young man. How else is he going to figure out what happened to Muriel?” She flattened her hands on the tabletop. “Muriel wanted her granddaughter to get the job as club manager. She thought if she bullied Brittany enough, Brittany would quit.”

  “Which she did.”

  “Yes.” Gracie nodded toward the sergeant. “But the rest of us, we weren’t about to give in to Muriel. The job was posted and even though Kendall Sadler applied for it just like her grandmother wanted her to, Avery was hired because Avery was the one best qualified.”

&nb
sp; Alterman turned my way. “Does that mean Ms. Sadler wanted you to quit too?”

  I managed a smile. “Too soon to tell.”

  “And then there’s Bill Manby, of course.” Thinking, Agnes drummed her fingers on the table. “He was our maintenance man up until a week ago. That’s when Muriel fired him. Just like that.”

  “Oh, he was a looker!” Gracie added. “Those wide shoulders, that curly hair! Those piercing blue eyes!”

  Alterman made note of this, too. Well, probably not the part about how Bill Manby was a looker, but about how Muriel had fired him.

  “What about other enemies?” the sergeant wanted to know.

  Gracie looked at the ceiling.

  Valentina studied her manicure.

  Agnes pretended to pick a piece of lint from her skirt.

  Patricia bit her lower lip.

  When Alterman snapped his notebook shut, every one of us flinched. “We’ll talk again,” he promised. “For now, you can leave your addresses and phone numbers with the officer out in the hallway. After that, you’re free to leave.”

  He strode into the hallway. I was right behind him.

  “What about me? Can I get back up to my room?”

  One corner of his mouth pulled tight. “We searched the building. There’s no one here who shouldn’t be here.”

  He hadn’t come right out and said I was crazy and that imagining a woman down in the basement proved it, and for this, I was grateful.

  Even if I wasn’t satisfied.

  “But what about the woman in the basement?” I asked him.

  “If she was there—”

  “What do you mean, if?” It was late, I was tired. It had been a long day. Yeah, I snapped, and I propped my fists on my hips, too. I looked him in the eye. “I know what I saw.”

  He rubbed a hand along the back of his neck. “And I believe you. But there’s no evidence of anybody else being here.”