The Thrill of the Haunt

by E. J. Copperman

  “Joyce?” she breathed.

  Helen trembled and looked at Katrina. She made a low sound in her throat.

  “That’s Joyce Kinsler,” Katrina said to no one in particular.

  Thirty

  I wish I’d had time for my mind to soak up all that information. That Dave Boffice was really Randy Sandheim was no surprise. And I’d suspected, once Paul had asked for a photograph of Joyce Kinsler, that she might not have been the woman I’d discovered in the kitchen of Joyce’s home. But the idea that Helen was Joyce, I’ll admit, threw me a little, and I wasn’t alone—everyone in the room was stunned and motionless. Okay, some of them were just confused, but the ones with context were stunned and motionless.

  Then I looked at Helen’s right hand, and saw the finger she couldn’t straighten out, and I realized that every time I’d seen her, she’d covered that hand with the other. To hide the finger that Matthew Kinsler had told me his daughter had caught in a car window at a young age and cried all night about.

  Holy mackerel.

  But I couldn’t even say anything in time: Dave/Randy, who, as advertised, had brought a gun with him, produced it from inside his jacket. He pointed it at me, then at Katrina, then at Brenda, then, for no particular reason, at Josh. He didn’t seem able to decide who he might want to shoot should the urge arise.

  From the back of the room, I heard a small protest as Mom hustled Melissa out and toward the front door, no doubt to tell McElone, who was outside, what had happened. Dave (and that’s what we’ll call him for the sake of sanity) didn’t seem to care; he let them walk out with no protest. On his part. Melissa was last heard arguing that she could defuse the situation all by herself, to no avail.

  Katrina took a step forward. “I don’t understand,” she said to Helen, aka Joyce. “Why did you pretend you were dead?”

  “Because she didn’t want anyone to know that the woman hanging in Joyce’s house was Helen Boffice,” I said. Okay, Paul said it, but only a select few could hear him, so I reiterated it. Now I understood why there were no pictures in Joyce Kinsler’s house after the murder—the killer(s) didn’t want anyone who entered to know that the woman who died was not Joyce. And even Matthew hadn’t seen the remains—the dead woman was already in a body bag when he had arrived at Joyce’s house. Now if only McElone could summon up the courage to come inside the “freaky” house . . .

  I didn’t have to wait long. Standing in the game-room doorway, police-issued firearm held in front of her, Lieutenant Anita McElone held her gun on Dave and said, “Don’t do anything stupid. I’m a police officer.”

  Dave looked at me and appeared more peeved than anything else. “I said not to bring any cops,” he snarled.

  “Yeah, like I always listen to murderers,” I answered.

  “I don’t understand,” Harry Rosen said to Beth. “Is this part of the show?” She looked contemplative but didn’t answer.

  “I can grab the gun,” Maxie offered, but I shook my head; it was too risky.

  “We’re not murderers.” Joyce seemed to want the spotlight. “It was a question of circumstance.”

  “You killed you own father and your own wife, Dave,” I said, ignoring whoever she was. “How could you do that?”

  Dave looked at McElone, and his eyes got meaner. “You don’t want to do anything rash, Officer,” he said.

  “Lieutenant,” she corrected him. I didn’t see how that helped.

  With Helen being Joyce, it started to make sense. I looked up at Paul but spoke to Dave. “You married Helen for her money, didn’t you, Dave? After you changed your name and got some fake ID, you married her for her money. But she wasn’t spending it.”

  “Don’t say anything,” Joyce warned Dave. I noticed that Paul’s eyes were closed tight; my guess was he was on the Ghosternet, probably trying to contact Matthew Kinsler or Helen Boffice.

  So I went on: “You lived with Helen for more than five years, trying to figure out a way to get at her millions.”

  “Who’s Helen?” Libby Hill had her hand raised to ask the question.

  I didn’t answer her. “But then you met Joyce, and the two of you hit on a scheme.”

  “Do I have to shoot you to shut you up?” Dave asked. I didn’t think he was waiting for an answer.

  McElone passed the Rosens, who accommodated her by taking a step back, and still had her gun drawn, very close to Dave now. I figured I could distract him long enough for McElone to disarm him.

  Paul’s eyes were open again. “I think you’ve got it, Alison,” he said.

  So I kept going. “You knew about creating a new identity; you’d done it before. All you had to do was get Joyce some of Helen’s ID, and as Helen’s husband, you had the access. Then you could skim off the money you wanted. Helen had so much, it probably took her months to notice.” From out of nowhere, I felt Josh standing next to me, his shoulder just a little in front, so he could move quickly if there was shooting in the room.

  And I felt really bad about not telling him there were ghosts in the house.

  Joyce smiled a very unattractive smile. “You’re guessing,” she said. “You have no proof.”

  “Not really.” McElone could cover Dave, but I was afraid Joyce might have a weapon, too. I had to keep talking. “There were withdrawals made from Helen’s bank accounts”—it was true I couldn’t prove that yet, but I bet McElone and the cops could—“and deposits for tens of thousands into yours, Joyce. Why would Helen give you that kind of money? Why would you show up at my door and pretend to be Helen? Actually, now that I think of it, why did you want me to follow Dave?”

  Tony appeared on my other side, and I wondered if Dave could even see me clearly with all the square feet of people trying to help. I was getting tired of being protected.

  Libby Hill took her husband’s arm, smiling, as if they were watching a really cool movie. I decided not to point out that the gun was real and probably loaded, even if it wasn’t exactly aimed with accuracy at the moment.

  Jeannie, somewhere behind me, was carrying Oliver out of the room. Probably to change his diaper, but it was just as well; she didn’t seem especially scared, either.

  Phyllis leaned in a little closer to hear so she could quote Dave and me later. Her hearing isn’t what it used to be. And you thought her eyes were bad.

  Sure enough, Joyce produced a gun of her own from her pocket and pointed it at me. “That’s it!” she shouted. McElone, forced to choose one to aim at, stuck with Dave, to whom she was closest. Another couple of steps, and she’d be able to touch him. Dave, looking out of the corner of his eye at her, probably knew that he was not going to do well if he turned to train the gun on McElone.

  “You knew Dave was going to see Helen during his lunch hours, didn’t you?” I said, trying to provoke a response that, hopefully, would not be bullet-ridden. “And you couldn’t follow him yourself, because he’d recognize your car. Were you trying to patch things up, Dave?”

  Dave looked furious, and probably would have fired if McElone hadn’t been close enough to put the muzzle of her gun on the back of his neck. “Don’t,” she said. Dave’s jaw clenched a few times, but he lowered his gun. McElone took it from him carefully.

  “Randy,” Brenda Leskanik moaned from across the room. “Why?”

  “For the money,” I told her.

  “No. Why did you change your name? Pretend to be dead? Why didn’t you let me know where you were?” She stared at her son and looked as sad as I’ve ever seen a woman look. “Why?”

  “What are you doing here?” Dave groaned.

  Brenda didn’t get a chance to answer because Joyce took a step toward me, still about ten feet away, and Tony and Josh closed ranks. I could barely see her over all that man.

  “I’m walking out of this room,” she said. “And nobody’s going to do anything about it, right?” She didn’t look at McElone, but it was clear to whom she was speaking.

  At that moment, Matthew Kinsler floated down through the
ceiling, took in the scene, and gasped at the sight of his daughter. “Joyce!” he said. “Joycie, you’re alive.”

  Melissa tried to look around the entrance to the game room, and I saw Mom pull her back into the hallway.

  “Yes, she is,” Cybill told Matthew. “But she’s claiming to be Helen Boffice.”

  “Who?” Matthew asked. “Oh. The wife.”

  Joyce looked sharply at Cybill. “Who are you talking to?” she demanded.

  “Thanks a heap, Cybill,” I said.

  “I’m losing track of who can see whom,” Cybill answered.

  Matthew’s face darkened as he watched the scene and heard his daughter’s voice. “What happened to you, Joycie?” he wondered aloud.

  “It’s your father,” I told her. “He’s here, and he’s worried about you.”

  “I should have known better than to get involved in this ghosty stuff,” McElone said. “Somebody killed Everett Sandheim and Helen Boffice.” She looked at Joyce. “And I’m starting to suspect someone here who’s actually alive.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Marv said. “I didn’t kill anybody.”

  Suddenly, I knew why Marv was there. “You got the report from the sewer guy, didn’t you?” I asked him.

  “Yeah. You were right—Mickey came by and took a look. Sure enough, he found something.”

  “Don’t say it yet,” I suggested. “Let’s see who can guess.” I turned toward Joyce. “What do you think might have shown up in the sewer line behind the Fuel Pit?” I asked her.

  Finally, her voice: “How on earth would I know?”

  “Because you put it there. You stabbed Everett eighty-six times, and then you made sure that the weapon disappeared, didn’t you?” I made a point of watching Joyce’s face closely as I said it.

  She smiled, ever so slightly.

  “I did nothing of the sort,” she said.

  “But you did. On the advice of a friend, I measured the window at the Fuel Pit’s men’s room.” I gave Paul a quick glance, and he nodded. “Randy here couldn’t have made it out that way, even if he walked inside with Everett leading him. Brenda couldn’t have possibly done it. But you, with that little slim frame, you would have fit.”

  The smile evaporated. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Joyce said.

  I ignored her protest. “The door was locked from the inside. The window was the only way out, and you were the only one whose hips would make it out that little window. I have a witness who saw Everett talking to a woman just before he went off and died. And after he was stabbed eighty-eight times with a small blade, that knife disappeared. Until it surfaced in Marv’s sewer line. There’s an easy way to dispose of a small weapon in a bathroom, isn’t there? But even a tiny penknife can stop up a sewer line, Joyce. Didn’t you know that?”

  “I did not stab Everett eighty-eight times,” she insisted.

  “No? How many, then?” That was McElone.

  “You did it, Joyce,” I said. Josh stood close again, seeming to sense that there would be danger. “You killed Everett first—why, because he knew your husband, Dave, was really his son, Randy?” Joyce remained silent, and she hadn’t even been read her rights yet. “But Helen must have found out what you were doing, because she moved out of the house with Dave and went back to her mother’s place and was repairing the storm damage. But then Dave started going over there. Why, Dave? Because if you reconciled, you could have access to her money? That hadn’t worked before.”

  Dave looked up with an odd smile on his face, a cold one. McElone was securing zip strips to his hands, which were gun-free and behind his back. “I signed a prenup,” he said. “I couldn’t get a dime of her money if we got divorced.”

  Matthew looked at me sadly. If he’d been alive, he would have had tears in his eyes. “Did she really do it?” he asked. “Why?”

  “A good question,” I responded, having given up all pretense. Tom Hill looked up where he expected I’d been looking, and instead of making eye contact with Matthew, he looked directly at Maxie without knowing it. Which was just as well. Maxie’s current T-shirt read simply, “What?” But her style of wearing it might have made Tom’s wife, Libby, slightly anxious.

  “Do you see this?” Kerin Murphy preached to her invited crowd, who were looking downright confused. “She talks to people who aren’t there! Just like Everett did! She’s just as crazy as he was!”

  And then it all made sense.

  I ignored Kerin, since that was what annoyed her most, and looked at Joyce. “That was it. Everett recognized his son. Brenda didn’t know Randy was alive, did you, Brenda?”

  Brenda’s neck tensed, but she shook her head.

  “Randy wasn’t expecting to run into his father, but he did,” I continued. “And Everett started talking about it. Dave was worried that if anyone believed his father, he could be exposed. He knew Everett was spending too much time in the Fuel Pit restroom and that there were security cameras at the door, but not in the back. He was too big, so he sent you, Joyce. With a little knife that could be easily disposed of.”

  “There’s no proof,” Joyce reiterated. She couldn’t get too close to me. She was small enough that Josh or Tony might have been able to wrestle the gun out of her hand. But it would have been dangerous in such a crowded room.

  “There is. Brenda knows her son. And Randy had warrants out on him for distributing narcotics. He knew people who could get fake IDs, so he could appropriate an identity if he needed one. He needed one.”

  “That’s right,” McElone told me. “I checked the records on David Boffice. He died when he was four days old. You look a lot older than that, sir,” she said to Randy. “You went off a cliff with your Harley, and everybody thought you were dead.”

  “I was dead,” Dave said over Joyce’s protests to be quiet. “I got revived by a hiker who knew CPR. When I woke up in the hospital as a John Doe, I realized I could get the warrants off my tail if I cleaned up and stopped dealing. I never wanted to be Randy Sandheim anyway. That guy was a loser.”

  Brenda looked at the floor and bit her lower lip.

  “I went into rehab and got clean. I’d seen the headstone for this little baby when I was working at the cemetery, so I got some ID from a guy I knew, took the name and started reading books about finance.”

  “Will you shut up?” Joyce insisted. “They can’t prove anything.”

  “It’s enough,” McElone told her. “Put down the gun and you can avoid any further charges. But I’m warning you, I am the best shot on the police range.”

  “You don’t want to fire your gun in a room full of civilians, Lieutenant,” Joyce sneered. “You’re just going to have to let me leave.”

  McElone stopped in her tracks. She tried to get an angle, but Joyce was small and standing too close to Phyllis and Marv for a clean shot. Interestingly, Phyllis didn’t look up from the notes she was taking but stepped back anyway. Marv looked positively absorbed in the drama, not realizing he was part of it. He stayed put.

  The guests looked thrilled.

  “Now just back away,” Joyce told her. “You don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  “Oh, Joycie,” Matthew Kinsler said. He backed up to the ceiling in sorrow and seemed incapable of any voluntary movement.

  McElone didn’t answer, but her eyes got angry as she took two steps back away from Randy and Joyce.

  “Let’s go, David,” Joyce said. Apparently she’d signed on for that name and was sticking with it.

  Maybe I could slow her down. “Forty-seven times, Joyce. You stabbed Everett forty-seven times. Why so many?”

  “It was a small knife,” McElone suggested, seeing what I was trying to do. “Maybe he wouldn’t have died with only a couple. And Everett wasn’t in mental shape to hold off the attack. He went into that men’s room before he started bleeding a lot, and she followed him in, just stabbing away with that little penknife. Why didn’t you bring your gun or a bigger weapon, Joyce? Because you couldn’t get rid of
those as easy as the penknife?”

  “It’s a nice theory, Lieutenant,” Joyce said. “I bet you can’t prove it.”

  I saw Paul gesture to Maxie, who moved toward the covered pool table to look for a cue. She moved the drop cloth I was using for a cover without disturbing the candles that were still burning there.

  But Joyce was on top of the situation. “I start shooting if anything weird happens,” she said, looking directly at me. “I don’t want any of your magician tricks.” Paul held up a hand and Maxie dropped the cloth.

  “They’re not tricks,” I answered. “The ghosts are real.”

  “I don’t care.”

  I felt Josh close ranks in front of me, and I nudged him a little. This wasn’t going the way I’d planned—well, the way I’d planned to plan—and it was really starting to annoy me.

  “Well, I do,” I told Joyce. “I’ve had it with you. You think you can just move anybody out of your way when things don’t go perfectly for you? Sorry, but life ain’t like that.”

  Joyce and David were almost at the door as the crowd parted to let them out. After the stress of the past week, I felt outside the scene. I’d forsaken my deceased friends, alienated the best guy I’d met in years, and paid short shrift to my guests in an attempt to bring this woman to justice, and here she was about to escape through my door, the one with the strange writing from Kerin Murphy just past its jamb.

  “Why did you hire me?” I demanded. “You killed Everett, and you were going to kill Helen. Why did you want me to follow your boyfriend around?”

  Joyce’s eyes narrowed. “Because he couldn’t be trusted. Because he was trying to patch things up with his wife. I needed to know where he was, and I couldn’t watch him. Once she was dead, I figured you could find enough evidence that I wasn’t the one who killed her. Now back off.”

  “You don’t get to walk away,” I said.