Spouse on Haunted Hill

by E. J. Copperman

  As always happens at such times, my phone buzzed. A text from Josh: “There for dinner in an hour?” Was it that late already? Wait, I needed to find out about Josh and The Swine meeting behind my back and in front of my ghost spy. Too many things were happening at the same time, and I didn’t understand any of them. I didn’t text back just yet.

  “How was I supposed to know he was going to get shot?” The Swine answered, but I noticed he wasn’t looking at Maroni or at me—he was talking directly to Melissa. “Believe me, I didn’t see this coming. Not any of it. I wouldn’t have put you in any danger, baby. I promise.”

  My daughter, in case you haven’t noticed yet, is a much better person than I am. She looked over at the father, who had pretty much abandoned her, lied to her on multiple occasions, ignored her when he didn’t want anything and rarely paid her child support, and said, “It’s okay, Dad. Really. I’m not mad.”

  “But we are,” Maroni told him. “About those patent papers.”

  Steven closed his eyes tight as if something had hurt him sharply. “I honestly don’t know anything about them, Lou. I don’t. I didn’t know Maurice was going to fly out here or I wouldn’t have come myself. What he did with his documentation is a complete mystery to me.”

  “Well, then.” Maroni settled himself into one of the armchairs I wasn’t currently occupying. “I guess we’re going to be here awhile.”

  I texted back to Josh: “Yeah. Please bring enough for more people.”

  * * *

  Instead my mother and father showed up and Mom was, as ever, carrying most of a Thanksgiving dinner in her backpack. But she was somewhat puzzled at the presence of the three extra men in my movie room, still not unbuttoning their overcoats and not taking off their identical fedoras.

  “What’s with those guys?” she asked me in the kitchen. “They in some kind of cult that makes you dress like Peter Lawford?”

  I gave her the Reader’s Digest version of current events. “The thing is, I don’t know who to believe,” I told her finally. “The three guys who seem to be holding us hostage just by not leaving, or the guy I lived with who never told me the truth for a half hour for years?”

  “You know where I stand,” Mom said, still unpacking various courses of something Melissa and she were going to cook. “Your ex-husband is not to be trusted.”

  Paul, hovering over Mom’s head, was stroking his goatee. Something was up. “Keep in mind, Loretta, that the three men sitting in the movie room are armed. They came here with a purpose and they indirectly threatened Melissa. They are not trustworthy, either.”

  Mom stopped talking. It’s what she does when she knows she’s wrong but she still doesn’t like The Swine.

  “We need a plan of action,” I said quietly to Paul. You never knew who was outside the kitchen door. “Does Maxie’s shovel strategy fit here?”

  Paul shook his head. “She and Everett are monitoring the situation in the movie room. From what I can tell, your ex-husband is sitting there looking uncomfortable while the three men are silent, intimidating through their presence alone.”

  “What about Liss?” I asked.

  “She’s turned on the television and is watching Young Frankenstein,” Paul said.

  Ooh. One of my favorites. Wait. Men. With guns. In the same room as my daughter. “We should get her out of there,” Mom said.

  “I gather Maroni and his two associates are going to make a move at some point,” Paul said. “I do not think it will involve Melissa, but we can’t rule that out. The best strategy is to find the paperwork they want and give it to them.”

  I took in a deep breath and let it out. I didn’t want to accede to Maroni’s mean tactics, but I also didn’t see how The Swine was entitled to anything that belonged Maurice DuBois, either. “Let’s go search Steven’s room,” I said.

  “Let’s?” Mom asked. “You want me to go search through his underwear and stuff?”

  “He didn’t bring anything with him, Mom. Whatever he’s got is on his back now.”

  Mom looked at me. “That’s worse.”

  “Besides, he hasn’t been staying here. He’s been at Bobby’s apartment. If he stashed the papers in his room, they won’t be hard to find because there won’t be anything else there distracting us.”

  Paul held up a hand. “Perhaps it’s best if I go in first by myself,” he said. “No one can see me and that will cast no suspicions.” He made sense, but then, he usually does. Then he stopped and turned his head. “Did you hear that?”

  I hadn’t heard anything unusual. My stomach turned over. “Liss?” I asked.

  “No. Thunder.”

  “It’s February, Paul. You’re not doing your electricity thing today. Go search Steven’s room.”

  He nodded and swooped out. Mom glanced over at me. “Do you think he’ll really shock himself into the next level?”

  “How would I know? I don’t get the Dead Guy Newsletter.” I stopped helping Mom put groceries away—in my kitchen—and bit my lower lip. “The thing is, finding or not finding these papers isn’t going to tell us who killed Maurice DuBois. We still need a plan.”

  Mom sniffed. She’s not crazy about killers, for reasons that don’t at all escape me. “You don’t think it’s those three men in the Mafia suits?”

  “If it was them they would have found what they needed. They wouldn’t have shot him if he could still lead them to billions. No. I think it was someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “That’s the question of the day.” I took my phone out of my pocket and started scrolling through numbers.

  “They let you keep your phone?” Mom asked. “Aren’t they worried you’ll call the police?”

  “That’s the thing. They haven’t done anything illegal. I could call McElone and she could come and not arrest them. But . . .” I found the people I was looking for and created a text chain. “How many people can you and Liss cook for tonight?” I asked Mom.

  “How many do you need us to cook for?”

  I gave my mother a hug.

  * * *

  It’s not hard to sound urgent in a text message. They’re sort of like telegrams (and I had some recent experience with telegrams, so I knew what I was talking about)—the form itself seems somehow immediate and necessary. So when I texted a select group of people and insisted they arrive at the guesthouse immediately, I got no argument from any of them. It wielded a sort of power I had never realized I could command.

  The other thing was to be sure I sounded like I was demanding, not requesting, each person’s presence. The most confused reply I got was from Tony, who asked if he and Jeannie should bring the kids or get a sitter. I told him the choice was his but we were trying to unmask a killer. I guessed the sitter was the option to be used but never got a reply.

  That was what it had come to: my best friends were used to me calling and asking if they wanted to come over to catch a murderer.

  My fiancé—I just like saying that—showed up first because he had been planning on coming anyway and was probably on his way when I’d contacted the others. Josh got the short version of our current situation and volunteered immediately to go into the movie room and watch out for Melissa. I did not ask him about meeting with The Swine, because I didn’t want to have that conversation in front of my mother.

  Paul arrived from the room I’d given Steven the one night he’d stayed here and he was shaking his head. “Nothing,” he reported. “And I mean nothing. You’ve cleaned up since your ex-husband was staying there, Alison. So you know there isn’t any paperwork out in the open. I checked even inside walls but didn’t find anything.”

  I reported that to Josh, who was standing in the kitchen because I had told him Dad was making sure Melissa was fine despite the presence of three possibly violent men and her father. Josh knew my own father in life and so trusts him as anyone who k
new him would, but he wasn’t happy about the situation, which meant he was, you know, sane.

  “If Paul can’t find anything, that means it’s not in the room. But Steven might have hid them in the house if he knew people were going to come looking,” Josh said.

  “He’s so smart,” Mom said. Already treating Josh like her own son. Which would no doubt come as a surprise to his parents. That was it! In-laws!

  “He spent some time at his parents’ house yesterday and the day before,” I said. “And he met with someone in their garage. I’m assuming it wasn’t Steve Wozniak and they weren’t reinventing all of electronics for the twenty-first century, so he might have done something with those papers there, assuming he ever had them at all.”

  “It’s a good thought,” Paul said, but it was at the same time Josh was wondering aloud why I didn’t just ask Steven himself, so I answered Josh first.

  “Because I can’t trust that any answer he gives me will be true,” I said. “I don’t think he’s said one true word to me since he’s been back on this coast, and maybe not for the past ten years at least.”

  “Look, I’m not going to defend Steven to you,” Josh said. When people start like that, it usually means they’re going to do exactly what they say they’re not going to do. “But I don’t think he’s as shifty as you make him out to be, at least not all the time.” See?

  Mom looked at him with some puzzlement in her eyes. “Maybe you just haven’t gotten to know him well enough,” she suggested. That, coming from my mother, was practically like saying the man was a serial killer, a public menace and a person of poor hygiene. And that he didn’t like puppies.

  Josh shrugged. “Obviously not as well as either of you. I’m going to check on the movie room.” And he walked out.

  I stared after him a moment wondering what could possibly have transpired between him and Steven that would cause such a shift in attitude. I looked at my mother. “Before I married Steven, you wanted to tell me not to go through with it, didn’t you?” I asked.

  She thought for a moment. It’s hard for Mom to admit that she ever had bad feelings about anything I’ve done in my life. The ashtray I made out of flammable Popsicle sticks in second grade and brought home to a nonsmoking family she considered an admirable work of imagination and ingenuity and it stayed on our coffee table until it was “accidentally” destroyed while the rug was being vacuumed. Twenty years later.

  But this time I’d backed her up against a wall. She nodded, finally. “I sort of wish I had, but then there’s Melissa,” she said.

  “Would you tell me if you felt that way this time?” I asked quietly.

  Mom walked over and gave me a hug. “I have no reason to do that this time,” she told me. “He’s a wonderful man. Marry him.”

  “How are we going to find out about the documents possibly being in your ex-husband’s family garage?” Paul said. He was looking away from Mom and me out of his discomfort with the emotions on display. Paul is uncomfortable with any emotions on display. I think it’s his British side.

  “If I give you the address, can you find someone on the Ghosternet who might be able to take a look?” I asked. “I won’t be able to get there until tomorrow, and I have all these possible murderers coming for dinner. Besides, I can pretty much guarantee there won’t be anyone home there tonight.”

  Mom and I had let go of each other and stood looking at our resident investigator ghost, who was still averting his eyes. “I’ve made contact with a few trustworthy people,” he said. “Please give me the information and I will ask if anyone in the area can check.” Then his head turned suddenly again. “Sure you didn’t hear thunder that time?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m sure, Dr. Franklin,” I said. “No need to get out the kite and the key until the weather breaks, at least two months from now.”

  Paul gratefully dropped through the floor without a sound, no doubt thrilled to be out of the room with these two gushy women. Mom looked at me and smiled.

  “Tell Melissa I need her in here,” she said. “She’s a better cook than I am.”

  On my way to the movie room I heard a knock at the front door and found Bobby Bertowski standing there looking sheepish. “Why am I here?” he demanded by way of greeting.

  “Why are any of us here, Bobby?” I showed him the coatrack and he hung up the parka he was wearing, putting his gloves in the pockets. “The others are inside. I’m sure you’ll be happy to see at least one of them.”

  He followed me to the movie room, where I passed on Mom’s message to Melissa. She was slightly put off but only because one of her favorite scenes in Young Frankenstein was about to begin and she wanted to see Gene Hackman pour hot soup in Peter Boyle’s lap. But she understood about responsibility and besides, nobody was going to eat until she got to work. She left after I looked at Lou Maroni and said, “She’s cooking. Deal with it.”

  Maroni shrugged. “Did I ever say she couldn’t leave the room?”

  Bobby walked directly to Steven in true toady fashion and smiled as he sat down next to his role model. “What are you doing here?” my charming ex asked.

  Bobby pointed at me. “She said I had to come.”

  Nobody else so much as looked up. And when I say “nobody else,” I’m talking about quite a crowd. Besides The Swine and his sidekick were Maroni and his two overcoated handmaidens, my father (floating over the big TV), Josh (thankfully not closing ranks with Steven), Boyle and Hackman, the last two of whom were frozen in time on the TV. Melissa had paused the movie when she got up to leave, given that no one else in the room seemed to be paying any attention to it. Philistines. Except Josh.

  Everett, Dad told me behind everyone’s back but Paul’s, was off looking for Maxie, who was supposed to have researched some background on Maroni that might come in useful later tonight but hadn’t materialized again. He’d said he’d be “right back,” but that was ten minutes earlier.

  I turned the TV off altogether and looked at the assembly, which I knew was about to get considerably larger. This was a gamble, and maybe a dangerous one, but there was a lot of unraveling to do with Maurice DuBois’s murder, and having everyone together seemed the fastest and simplest way to sort things out. Besides, it meant that I wouldn’t have to drive anywhere far in the Volvo before Marv had performed some magic on its heater.

  “Since when do you take orders from her?” The Swine asked his friend.

  Bobby shrugged. “I dunno. She said if I didn’t come she’d tell you I’d spilled a bunch of your secrets, so I came.” The man really didn’t seem to listen to anything he said.

  “You told her my secrets?” Steven rose off his soft easy chair, which I knew was something of a grandstand move for him.

  “She said it was important.”

  “You guys know I’m here in the room, right?” I asked.

  True to form, they ignored my presence and continued to bicker like an old married couple about who told whom what and at what time. The idea that they were ostensibly talking about what would in their circles be classified material—and were from all appearances revealing nothing of the least bit of interest to anyone else in the room—seemed to elude them.

  Finally Maroni stood up. “I’m not really seeing much point to staying,” he said. In lockstep behind him the two towers rose out of their chairs and in unison shrugged in a gesture that indicated they might have to knock down a couple of buildings just to warm up tonight. “Come on, Stevie. We’re leaving.”

  That struck The Swine by surprise; he dropped the finger he had raised in Bobby’s face to make a point and seemed to sag from the hair down. He looked at Maroni. “We?”

  “Yeah. You’re the one who knows where the patent is. I’m the one who’s going to find out. We don’t have to do that here and ruin everybody’s appetite. So my friends and I will insist that you join us, and then everybody will be happy. Exce
pt you.” He gestured to the two other men in his entourage and they were at either of Steven’s shoulders in seconds.

  “Wait. Lou.” The Swine had started sweating pretty much on cue. “That’s not necessary. I really don’t know where that paperwork would be. No matter what you do, I’m not going to tell you, because I don’t know. So why don’t we forget it?”

  For a man who could convince senior citizens on the very edge of poverty that giving him money would make them financially secure, that was an especially weak argument and Maroni was certainly not buying. “Forget it? Billions of dollars and we should just forget it? You are a funny man, Stevie. Let’s go.” Another hand gesture and there were large, somewhat hairy hands on both of my ex-husband’s shoulders.

  Steven and the Maroni party leaving was bad for my plan and besides, I was not going to be the one to explain to Melissa why her father had so few thumbs the next time she saw him. So I turned toward Maroni. “I don’t understand something,” I said.

  His eyebrows rose slightly. I wasn’t sure if it was what I had said or the fact that I had spoken at all that seemed to startle him. “What don’t you understand?” he asked. “It’s pretty simple. I want to know something he knows and he needs to tell me. How pleasant or unpleasant that experience has to be is entirely up to your hus—sorry, ex-husband. What’s to understand?”

  “You were pulling all your money out of the scheme and coming to collect it from Steven,” I reminded him. “You didn’t want to invest in this SafT thing anymore. But once this guy DuBois is shot—by someone, and we don’t know whom—all of a sudden you’re desperately interested in owning the patent he had. If the program doesn’t work, why do you want it so badly?”

  Sure, it was a stalling tactic, meant to distract Maroni from hauling Steven away, but it was an effective enough one. Everyone remained in the room.

  “It’s about perception,” Maroni answered. He seemed to be in earnest, which was the last thing I’d expected. “If everybody on the Internet thinks this thing is the next Pinterest, then it doesn’t matter if it works. It just matters that they’ll put up the money to buy it and I’d like to own that business. That’s fairly simple, isn’t it?”