Spouse on Haunted Hill

by E. J. Copperman

  McElone did not acknowledge me as the uniforms took Steven to the waiting cruiser and the door closed again, no doubt to the relief of the other three stunned patrons of the Old Bean who had been watching and shivering as the drama played itself out. Just before she closed the door, however, the lieutenant did look in my direction.

  “I’ll be in touch,” she said.

  Thirteen

  “Dad is in jail?” Melissa said.

  She was sitting on a barstool in the kitchen with a turkey sandwich in front of her on a plate. It was untouched, but her cell phone wasn’t; she was getting texted by her friends about every twenty seconds. She was not paying much attention to the phone and more to me, but I was not getting the nightmare reaction to the news that I had been dreading the whole way back in my freeze-dried Volvo. I was getting something much worse.

  She was being reasonable and results-driven. My daughter looked at me without a tear in either eye, hands in a pyramid under her nose, listening intently and pursing her lips in thought. She was all strategy and necessity. It was chilling.

  “Well, not exactly, honey. Not yet. Right now he’s being questioned by Lieutenant McElone and an investigator from the county prosecutor’s office. If they think they have enough evidence to hold him, he’ll be kept at least until Monday morning, when they can arrange an arraignment and possibly a bail hearing in front of a judge.”

  Paul, floating over the stove, studied Melissa closely like a really interesting work of art, but one that might move or change at some point. He didn’t want to miss anything. That didn’t stop him from lighting one of the front burners with his foot just to see if the energy worked on gas. It did.

  “So the lieutenant hasn’t charged him yet.” Melissa had been studying civics in school and there had been a section on the criminal justice system she found fascinating. That might have been because Jared was in that class, and she absolutely didn’t have a crush on him at all. “That means they can’t hold him longer than forty-eight hours, but that still takes us into Tuesday.” She nodded as if agreeing with herself. “There’s time for us to clear him.”

  Whoa! “Us? What can we do?” I asked. “We’re not lawyers.”

  “No,” Paul jumped in. “We’re investigators. There are a number of things we can do to find out who actually murdered Maurice DuBois.”

  Oh boy. Apparently they had Kool-Aid in whatever dimension he was inhabiting and he had drunk it. “The police believe Steven had some involvement,” I said between clenched teeth, trying to be subtle in my head fake toward Melissa.

  “You don’t have to shield me, Mom,” my daughter said. Apparently subtlety was not my strong suit. “The police think Dad killed Mr. DuBois. But we know he didn’t, so we can explore areas that they won’t bother to check.” She looked toward Paul. “What should we do first?” Her phone buzzed again. She glanced at it and her face registered something other than pleasure, but she looked up again. No doubt she was being reminded of homework she was supposed to have done over her vacation.

  “The key is to determine who else will benefit from DuBois being dead,” he started. “Murder isn’t something anyone does lightly. There has to be a motive. In this case, we have no other suspects yet, so we can’t possibly determine motive. We need to know who was aware of DuBois’s presence here in New Jersey. He probably didn’t even know he was coming here until your dad got on the flight Thursday night, Melissa. So we need to get to DuBois’s cell phone and see who he contacted, where he was staying and who called him.”

  “Will Lieutenant McElone give you Maurice DuBois’s cell phone, Mom?” Melissa looked at me as if she were conducting a board meeting of the corporation she will no doubt own one day and wanted me to find out whether a rival company was going to compete with us in an emerging market.

  This was going on too long. “Wait. Let’s stop and think about this for a moment,” I said. It’s what I say when I don’t know what comes next. There had to be some way to avoid this.

  “Think about what?” Liss asked.

  “The lieutenant isn’t just guessing, honey,” I said. “You know her. She’s not going to bring in your father if she doesn’t have some type of proof.”

  Melissa is a very intelligent girl. Normally she gets to the gist of something faster than I do, but when she doesn’t want to confront something, she can find pathways around it that aren’t on any map. “The lieutenant doesn’t need proof to question Dad,” she said. “She knows the man is dead. She wants to know what Dad can tell her about it. We need to give her more information about who killed the man in the alley.”

  “Liss . . .” I started. How to do this? I mentally cursed both The Swine and McElone for placing me in this position. “The lieutenant isn’t just asking Dad for information about the man who was shot. She wants to know what connection he has to it.” Okay, so I chickened out at the last minute and didn’t say McElone considered Steven her best suspect. You didn’t have to look into Melissa’s eyes and tell her she might never see her father again without bulletproof glass between them.

  Even with my gutless evasion, Liss got the message. Paul watched her intently. Paul is big into people’s reactions to things whether they are suspects in a case or not. He has a heart—at least figuratively—but his mind gets in its way pretty regularly. He’ll think about the other person’s feelings, but he’ll do it later.

  “Lieutenant McElone thinks Dad killed this man.” Liss looked terribly concerned; I got that. But her eyes narrowed as she put it all together. “And you agree with her?”

  I wasn’t going to cop to that even if it was true. “I’m not saying that,” I began.

  But I didn’t get a chance to continue, because Maxie was floating down from the ceiling. Maxie likes nothing better than to get credit for having an idea I’ll accept, so in a triumph of awful timing she caught a glimpse of me and said without even trying to read the room, “So, did you go see the lady cop like you said you would?”

  Melissa’s face favors her father no matter what the circumstances. But when she heard that, her expression was a dead ringer for Steven’s when he’d been turned around and faced me at the Old Bean. “You went to see Lieutenant McElone?” she demanded. “Before Dad got arrested?”

  There wasn’t any way on this planet this situation would turn out well for me. I knew that, but I had to at least offer a defense. Unfortunately the best I could do on such short notice was “He didn’t exactly get arrested . . .”

  Melissa did not wait for me to finish. She picked up her phone, put her plate back in the fridge (that girl is well mannered) and left the kitchen. I tried; I did. I said, “Liss, you know that I—”

  That was as far as I got. My daughter turned, standing in the kitchen doorway, and glared at me. “I know that you have a gripe with Dad. Of course you do. He went out to California and moved in with Amee. But you need to get over that. He’s not The Swine, Mom. He’s my dad, and I’m telling you he would never kill somebody. Stop being so mad at him and face the facts.” And in a self-righteous manner only a thirteen-year-old girl could possibly make work, she turned and pushed the kitchen door open, then vanished into . . . the den.

  I stood, stunned, in the middle of my kitchen, trying to remember what I was supposed to do next. I had a very strong urge to call my mother. As I reached for the phone in my pocket, I wondered what I’d say when she picked up the phone. “Your granddaughter’s being mean to me?” My own grandfather once told me that grandparents and grandchildren get along so well because they have a common enemy. I didn’t think that ploy would work well with my mother.

  “What’d I miss?” Maxie asked.

  Paul looked at her, then at the kitchen door, which was still swinging, then back at Maxie, then at me.

  “I think we have a case to investigate,” he said.

  * * *

  In the end, I did call my mother. She and Dad were in th
e next Dodge Viper (Mom looks like a badass and drives below the speed limit) to my house, where she was surprisingly sympathetic to this madwoman who was complaining about the behavior of her saintly granddaughter. Paul, half in the boiler, had felt it best to retreat to an area where we would most likely be undisturbed.

  We convened in the basement, where Dad, who was ankle-deep in floor, could assess the space that I had now decided was going to stay unfinished because I was done with this house and probably should have sold it when Steven wanted me to. Maybe I could have kept him out of jail. I could do guilt with the best of them.

  My father was not, however, envisioning a cozy new guest room in my basement. Instead he was trying to figure out what Paul was constructing down there.

  The late private investigator had gone all Doc Brown on us, amassing electrical and electronic equipment in one corner as if he were expecting energy to be a precious commodity that no one would have access to very soon so he needed to horde as much of it as possible. I had not called him on it yet, simply because I was afraid he’d explain, and what good was that going to do?

  Mom, who had unpacked the makings for a lavish dinner from her little backpack—on no notice at all, she just had it around the house ready to go—was not thrilled with being in a dusty spot like this, but she would indeed follow my father anywhere and this was where he wanted to be.

  “I talked to Steven’s mother and she didn’t know anything except how to reach him, which was probably just to call his cell because he’d answer her,” I told them. “I don’t know who else to talk to.”

  “How about his father?” Mom asked.

  I thought about talking to Harry Rendell after what I’d seen at his house. “I’d rather not,” I said.

  “It would be more likely that a business associate would be involved,” Paul suggested, although he was busy gathering extension cords and piling them in the corner where I’d once thought a spare guest room would go. “Do you know any of the people your ex-husband worked with when he lived on the East Coast?”

  “Not really,” I said. There was an old CD player in one corner and Paul was giving it the lean and hungry look. “I didn’t get involved with his work much, and he tended not to bring it home because he was in Manhattan all day. I heard names, but I only met actual people a couple of times, and it was years ago. Paul—” I waved my hands to distract him from the thrilling obsolete technology he was ogling. “Have you tried reaching Maurice DuBois on the Ghosternet?”

  Paul can communicate with other ghosts with a kind of telepathy/sensitivity hybrid I call the Ghosternet because I am hilarious. Paul did not agree with that assessment, but he had not asked me to stop.

  “It’s still very soon after he died,” Paul reminded me. “It usually takes at least three or four days before someone’s spirit might become cognizant of the change. We don’t know if DuBois will surface at all, but if he does, it probably won’t be until tomorrow at the earliest.” He picked up the CD player and moved it into the corner with the rest of Mt. St. Sony.

  Dad couldn’t stand it anymore. “What are you doing?” he asked Paul.

  “He’s making a pile of junk,” Maxie said. “Can’t you tell?” Maxie thought she was being amusing. Maxie, unlike me, is not hilarious.

  “I am collecting equipment that can channel electrical energy,” Paul told Dad, wisely choosing not to engage Maxie at all. “I am planning a very serious experiment and it will require routing electricity from the roof to the basement.”

  A fairly long silence followed that. “In my house?” I asked finally.

  Paul looked a little surprised. “I would have asked permission before trying it, of course, Alison,” he said. “But I assure you there will be no danger of damage to anyone or anything in the house.”

  I shook my head in wonder. “The case, Paul. What should we do about Steven? Is there any chance he didn’t kill Maurice DuBois?”

  Paul diverted his attention again to look at me. “Of course there’s a chance, and a fairly strong one, I would say. He has a motive, to be sure, but the timing is probably off, since Josh can confirm your ex-husband’s whereabouts for at least part of the time in question. Can you verify the medical examiner’s estimate of DuBois’s time of death?”

  “I’ll ask Phyllis. She has an . . . arrangement with the ME’s office in the county.” Phyllis knew a guy who worked for the ME, and she got information in a way that I preferred not to think about when I’d eaten in the past forty-eight hours. “If she knows anything—and she will—I can get her to tell me.”

  “Good. Then go to the police station. See if they have indeed jailed your ex-husband. If not, try to contact him and get some names of previous associates. If they have, ask where he’s being held so you can go visit him there.”

  I took a step back involuntarily. “You want me to go see Steven?” The look on his face at the coffeehouse was imprinted on my cerebral cortex. It was not something I cared to see again. “Um . . . would they let Melissa see him?”

  “Alison,” my mother said. “Is that what you want?”

  She had me. It wasn’t what I wanted. I shook my head and tried to notice something on my feet I could focus on.

  “You should have thought of that when you went and ratted your ex out to the lady cop,” Maxie volunteered.

  My father’s eyes widened a little. “Alison,” he said. “You gave up your ex to the police?” He grinned. “I’m proud of you.” Dad was probably the most vocal critic when Steven and I had announced our engagement.

  “Jack,” my mother admonished. Lightly.

  “No, as a matter of fact, I didn’t,” I told the gathering. “I decided against going to see McElone, got halfway to the police station and then just turned and drove to Point Pleasant to meet Steven after I thought it over in the car for a while.”

  “What!” Maxie was appalled. “The first time we agree on a plan and you didn’t go through with it?”

  “You were just scolding me for turning him in and now you’re scolding me for not turning him in,” I pointed out. “Make up your mind.”

  “Girls,” Mom admonished. Lightly.

  “She started it,” Maxie said, and swooped into the upper floors.

  “Sure,” I said to the ceiling. “It’s easy to win all the arguments when you can just fly out of the room.”

  Then I heard footsteps above, which would have been in the kitchen. The guests generally don’t go in there, although there are sometimes snacks they keep in the fridge and they’re welcome to take what they like anytime. Because I don’t serve food, they usually have no reason to patronize my kitchen.

  “Melissa?” I wondered aloud. I headed for the stairs as Dad simply rose to check.

  “No,” I heard him call from upstairs a moment later. “Worse.”

  It couldn’t be.

  But there he was, in all his “glory.” Once Mom and I got upstairs—Mom takes a little longer than I do—we found The Swine in my kitchen, with Dad, Paul and Maxie hovering over his head like United Airlines flights stacked up over Newark Airport. “Ally!” he said, the fake charm practically washing over me. “And Loretta.” He moved to hug Mom, who looked positively nauseated at the prospect. “So good to see you.”

  Mom stood stock-still while Steven put his arms around her, making it look like he was hugging a very small tree. She endured the embrace and then exhaled when he let go. “Steven,” she said, her voice freezing as it reached him. “I’m surprised you’re here.”

  “So am I,” I told the Swine. “How’d you make bail?”

  “I didn’t,” he said. “They didn’t charge me because I didn’t do anything wrong and they know it.” He stood with his arms folded, daring me to disprove his statement. I couldn’t and didn’t necessarily want to, although I didn’t believe him simply out of habit. “Your Lieutenant McElone figured that out pretty quick and le
t me go.”

  “She’s not my Lieutenant McElone,” I said. Defensiveness is my go-to posture when The Swine is in the house. “We know each other a little bit.”

  “You told her how to find me.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t tell her how to find him,” Maxie said.

  “I didn’t,” I told both of them. “I don’t know how McElone found out you were going to be at the Old Bean, but it wasn’t from me.”

  “Okay,” The Swine said. His tone indicated that it wasn’t okay at all.

  Paul, busying himself with turning the ceiling fan on and off, was creating two problems: One, he was distracting The Swine, who asked why the fan was taking on a mind of its own; and two, he was cooling off a room when it was nineteen degrees outside. I gave him a look that hopefully my ex did not see and Paul, duly chastised, stopped touching the fan mechanism. “Sorry, Alison,” he said.

  “What is that?” Steven asked.

  Luckily the kitchen door swung open and Melissa walked in. Her face was turned toward her phone—naturally—but Steven did not let the opportunity pass to show us all how much she adored him. “Lissie!” he said.

  Liss looked up, startled. “Dad!” she said. She wasn’t as over-the-top as I might have expected, but walked over to hug her father and smiled. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, baby. It was all a misunderstanding.” You know, like Watergate.

  “What happened?” Melissa asked.

  “Yeah,” Mom said. The Swine has a way of bringing out the tough-as-nails dame she thinks she is. “Exactly what did happen? How did that man looking for you end up dead in an alley?” And they wonder where I got my demure personality.

  “I have no idea,” The Swine lied. “But for the moment it’s not my problem. The cops have to find somebody else to blame.”

  There was something he wasn’t saying. I could hear that in his voice. “How exactly did you convince Lieutenant McElone she shouldn’t hold you?” I asked. “I know her, and she’s pretty hard to convince.” It was true—McElone still wouldn’t come into the house when she knew the ghosts were around, which in Paul’s case was always.