Lucy licked her lips. “Yeah. I guess. Look, I don’t know how to say this, exactly, but I think I saw something a little odd not too long ago.”
Something odd in my guesthouse. Who would have expected that?
“Odd?” I asked, as if everything around here was always completely normal.
“I was sitting here reading, maybe twenty minutes ago,” she said. “And I would swear I saw something fly by the door.”
This is a problem when some of the guests in the house aren’t aware of the, let’s say, special nature of the house. We’d been varying the times of the “spook shows” for when Lucy was out, and that was one of the reasons I was doing a check of the house now. But it wasn’t like I hadn’t anticipated this question coming up. The trick was to limit the damage as much as possible.
All I had to do was raise possibilities and let her decide which one to believe.
“You saw something fly by the door,” I said calmly, sounding like I didn’t want her to think she was crazy. “What did you think you saw go by? Could it have been a leaf, or even just a change in the light from the foyer?”
“It was a laptop computer,” Lucy said.
Okay, this was going to be a little trickier than I might have anticipated. “A laptop computer?” I repeated, giving myself time to think.
“Yeah. A MacBook. A real old one.” Yep, that was my laptop all right. Maxie must have been taking it upstairs to get on the Internet. She spends a lot of time on the Internet, and since her computer was confiscated by the police when she was murdered, I magnanimously allowed her to use mine. She, of course, never failed to let me know how old and out of date it was, but since I was the one who’d have to pay for a newer model, she’d just have to get by. It was an object too large for her to conceal in her clothing, the only way the ghosts can move physical objects around without them being seen. Maxie did not wear loose-fitting clothing.
“You sure?” I asked. Maybe I could plant a seed of doubt in Lucy’s mind.
She nodded confidently. “I work at the Apple Store in San Diego. And I can tell you, I haven’t sold one of those in years.”
“No, I meant are you sure you saw one fly by? Maybe you were thinking about work and thought you saw something.”
Lucy shook her head. “I saw it, all right. It was really strange, like someone was carrying it. It bounced up and down, like the person was taking steps.”
That was weird in itself, since Maxie and Paul generally glide, not walk, around the house.
“Oh, that,” I improvised. If I could convince her it was something normal…
“Oh, that?” Lucy asked. “Does that happen a lot?”
“Sure,” I assured her. “What you saw wasn’t a laptop computer, not a real one, anyway.”
“It wasn’t?” Lucy, although a sophisticated person, was at least as stupid as I was, and as proof, I offer the fact that she thought The Swine was absolutely dreamy.
I waved a hand. “Nah. Melissa was playing a trick on you.” I made a mental note to inform Melissa that she had played a trick on Lucy. “I gave her my old laptop when it died a year or so ago, and she likes to take things apart. She gutted it, put the case back together, and she puts it on wires. Pretends it’s walking around the house. She actually has an old broom handle she uses to make it look like it’s bouncing up the stairs.”
Lucy regarded me carefully for a very long moment. Then she smiled broadly. “Of course!” she said. “I thought I saw a wire holding it up!”
Sure she did! “She actually uses fishing line,” I said. “It’s very thin but very strong.”
Lucy laughed, now in on the joke. “She’s such a smart girl!” she exclaimed.
“Yes,” I exhaled. That was the only part of this whole exchange that was true, so it was somehow comforting to agree with it.
“She must get it from her father. He’s so clever!”
I said good-bye to Lucy and walked out into the den.
Mrs. Fischer and Mrs. Spassky were out in town somewhere, no doubt shopping for more mementos of their shore vacation. That left Don Petrone, Francie and Albert as the spectators for the upcoming spook spectacle. Spooktacle? Make note of that for future brochure to Senior Plus.
And I had to make sure The Swine wasn’t in the house when the fun began.
All I needed was for Steven to find out about the ghosts. Either he’d think I was crazy and sue for custody of Melissa, or he’d try to find an angle to exploit my two squatters for financial gain. Technically, I was doing that, but I was a benevolent dictator; Steven would not be above advertising on network TV to come and see the ghosts in Harbor Haven, New Jersey.
Okay, maybe I had kind of done that, too, when I’d allowed the reality show to film here—but ultimately it hadn’t even brought me that much publicity, since McElone had prevailed upon me to seek an injunction prohibiting the production company from using some of the spookier footage they’d shot. The lieutenant felt that it would “compromise any future investigation” into the incident. Trent Avalon, the executive producer of Down the Shore, had argued, but lost. He thought it was my idea, and although he said he might want to bring the show back to the house when they shot their next season, he was not a happy camper leaving behind “the best sweeps-month footage we’ve ever gotten.”
I wasn’t so sure I wanted them back, frankly.
I found my ex-husband in the backyard, which was still in a state of recovery from the Down the Shore television filming experience: While the show was shooting, enormous doublewide trailers had been parked here for weeks while tanned and brash young “TV stars” tried to be spontaneous on cue. It had wreaked havoc with my lawn. The production company had done its best to restore the area to its original state, but right after they left, the hot weather arrived, the rain stopped and we were shortly on drought alert. I had to stop watering, and there was still a certain amount of regrowth that had not yet taken place, even with normal rainfall returning.
Steven was standing in the hot sun, wearing cargo shorts and a T-shirt with a picture of the Beatles on it, along with a straw hat he told me would keep his face from getting sunburned without having to “smear chemicals all over my skin.” Living in California, where they know how to deal with both the sun and a fear of chemicals, had changed my ex, and I wasn’t sure whether it was in a good way or not.
My mission here was to cook up some errand for Steven to perform that would take him away from the house long enough that he’d miss the ghostly goings-on scheduled for the pre-lunch performance. The trick was to get him to leave without Melissa, since she was gearing up for her “amazing flying girl” section of the aforementioned goings-on, something she insisted on doing at least once a week. It consisted of Paul or Maxie (I usually insisted on Maxie, who could hold physical objects more securely) lifting Liss up at the top of the stairs and then “flying” her down and through the house while she pretended to be horrified, something no guest had ever believed, given the ecstatic expression on my daughter’s face as she levitated her way through the house. The giggling didn’t help the illusion much, either.
“What are you up to?” I asked him.
Steven, enjoying his “contemplative moment” pose, pretended to be startled by my voice. “Oh, Alison! I didn’t see you there!” he lied. “I was just doing some thinking.”
That was rarely a good thing. “Thinking about what?”
“I’ve made a lot of wrong turns in my life,” he said with a wistful tone I came close to believing. “Maybe I should have gone for that doctorate you wanted me to get. Maybe I gave up too early on the idea of investment services for people with less disposable income.” He turned toward me to make “significant” eye contact. “Maybe I should never have left Melissa and you for California.”
Okay, so it was a crock, but reacting with hostility wasn’t going to get him out of the house when I needed him gone. “You think so?” I asked, matching him pose for pose. “You weren’t happy out there with Amee?�
� And I would like it noted that I almost said “Barbie” but caught myself at the last second.
He wrinkled his brow, turning specifically toward the sun so he could squint more effectively. Man, he was good. “I thought I was, but since I’ve come home, it’s occurring to me that I was just fooling myself. I think this is where I belong.”
“No kidding.” All right, so I was vamping; I didn’t know where to go with that.
Steven grunted a little, a sign that he was becoming even more philosophical. “I don’t like who I am out there,” he said. “I like who I am here. With you and Melissa.”
I would have to take an hour or two later—probably while not sleeping tonight—and ruminate on why I should believe anything this man said. But he sounded so sincere, so truly lost, that I found myself sympathizing.
Then I hardened. No time for this now—I had to get him out of the house.
“You really want to help me?” I asked.
Steven turned and smiled like a golden retriever seeing a stick about to be thrown. “Absolutely! What do you need? Help in your investigation?” That was new.
“I need you to go to the Home Improvement Mart and pick up some things for Liss’s new room,” I said. “Can I give you a list?”
This obviously was not the intimate, husband-and-wife kind of thing my ex had been hoping for, but I was opening the door for him to do something I could at least theoretically consider a favor. Maybe I’d be beholden to him later on (more likely not, but there was no reason for him to know that).
He jumped at the opportunity and was gone ten minutes later, in my poor overworked Volvo. Wiping my brow both from heat and relief, I went upstairs to the attic, where I knew Maxie would be lurking. Luckily, Paul was there, too, since he was the one I’d really been looking for anyway.
“I was hoping to find you here,” I told him. “I don’t know what to do about Big Bob.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know what to do?” Maxie asked. “Find out who killed him.”
“Thanks for the help. And by the way, don’t go flying my laptop past one of the civilians anymore, okay?”
She scowled at me. “How am I supposed to know which ones know we’re there and which ones don’t?”
“The ones who look stupefied to see a MacBook zooming by the door of the library generally don’t,” I pointed out. “Just hide it under your shirt.”
“It makes me look weird,” Maxie said.
I avoided mentioning that she was weird. “Nobody can see you.”
“Big Bob,” Paul reminded us. “Where are we in the investigation?”
“Nowhere,” I said. “All the ME says is that he got hit in the back of the head. The crime scene could be anywhere, because Bob was probably moved from somewhere else, unless he was buried right where he stood. Plus, it was all two years ago. We don’t know what he was doing or why anybody would want him dead. Honestly, Paul, I have no idea what to do next.”
Paul stroked his goatee, making him look strangely like a muscular, translucent professor of fine arts. “You’ve gotten all your information secondhand,” he said. “We need something more immediate, something you can experience yourself.”
“What does that mean?” I asked. “Unless you have blueprints for a time machine or tickets for ‘Big Bob—the Ride,’ I don’t see how I can experience any of this firsthand.”
He smiled on one side of his mouth. “Yes, you do,” he said.
Oh, this wasn’t going to be good. “I can’t,” I answered him. “I don’t know anybody—”
“You know Luther,” Maxie broke in. “You know me. I can help you. The first thing is to do something about the way you dress.”
“Paul…” I attempted.
“I’m sorry,” he answered. “This is one time that I’ll have to go with Maxie’s judgment.”
That was the last thing I wanted to hear.
“First,” Maxie said, “get me a piece of paper and a pen. You’re going to have to borrow some of my clothes.”
Nope, I was wrong. That was the last thing I wanted to hear.
Ten
“You know, you’re really not the same size as Maxie was.”
Kitty Malone, Maxie’s mother, read the note her daughter had sent with me (sealed, so I couldn’t see it beforehand) and, without questioning it, had led me to a room upstairs in her house that clearly had once been Maxie’s. The room, like the rest of Kitty’s incredibly immaculate house, was neat as a pin, but it was very Maxie—you’d have thought a heavy-metal band had lived there with a Renaissance Faire convention, the push-pull between outrageous and gorgeous was so strong.
We were standing there, next to a closet with sliding doors, and Kitty was holding various articles of clothing up on hangers next to me, trying to gauge whether I could wear them.
“I really didn’t think I was,” I replied. I knew exactly which areas of my figure were either larger or smaller than on Maxie, and I was coming away with body-image issues. “It’s okay with me if none of this stuff will work.”
Kitty shook her head. “Oh no,” she said. “Maxie’s note says she wants me to find you clothes of hers to wear, and I’m going to find them. It’s really the least I can do, after all she’s been through.”
Not long after I’d taken possession of the house, I had contacted Kitty with the news that her daughter, though still deceased, was within reach, and could communicate with her. Kitty had been naturally skeptical, but after a while, she’d come by and been convinced. She can’t see or hear Maxie, but they communicate in writing and on the computer screen, and seem to have actually improved their relationship. Kitty comes by every week or so to “see” her daughter, and I often hear laughter coming from the room where the two of them have their Bizarro World chats.
“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” I said, attempting to put an end to this embarrassing process. I didn’t want to dress like Maxie, and I was starting to resent the implication that I should.
Kitty held up a short—no, really short—black leather skirt and narrowed her eyes. “This one might work,” she said.
“Oh, I sincerely doubt it,” I said, but Kitty was already taking it off the hanger.
Having observed Maxie all these months, I could recognize some of the clothing coming out of that closet, and that was eerie enough in itself. But being in this room, which Maxie had clearly decorated herself, with its blood-red walls and a Viking helmet over the doorway (how did she make this stuff work?), was somehow considerably creepier than living in a house with two actual, certifiable ghosts. Don’t ask me.
“Let’s see,” Kitty said.
I stood there for a moment.
“Come on,” she reiterated.
Unable to come up with a decent argument against it, I took off the paint-stained jeans I was wearing and took the mosh-pit-ready garment from Kitty’s hand. She nodded after I’d wriggled uncomfortably into the skirt. “I can let a couple of stitches out of that, and you’ll think you were born in it,” she said, eyeing me with the practiced eye of a master seamstress—despite the fact that she had been, I was told, the speech and language expert for the Lavallette school system for more than twenty years before retiring and opening a private consulting business.
“I don’t know,” I said, holding my breath. “I’m pretty sure I was born in my skin, and this is tighter than that.”
Kitty laughed. “Don’t worry. By the time I get through with it, you’ll be able to walk and breathe at the same time.”
“Bet you a dollar I won’t,” I told her.
It took another forty minutes, but eventually Kitty managed to (literally) talk me into the skirt, a pair of black leather pants (if anything, more embarrassing than the skirt), and a couple of T-shirts that would have seriously bared Maxie’s midriff and just covered mine. There was also plenty of silver jewelry and various accoutrements, each guaranteed to make me feel horrified and self-conscious until I could get home and into what I laughingly referred to as my “w
ardrobe.”
Once the pain of the assessments and fittings had passed, we went to Kitty’s ridiculously neat sewing room. Honestly, I believe that if a single thread was misplaced, Kitty would have burned the entire house down and started again. The woman was neat. She began the undoubtedly arduous task of making Maxie’s style fit my body, and I sat in a cushy chair next to the window.
“What’s all this about, anyway?” Kitty asked. She had not questioned the idea of doing as Maxie had asked, and had seemed wholly uninterested in the need behind it until now.
I had hoped to get out of the house without discussing it, because I wasn’t sure what kind of reaction I’d get, but there was no reason to lie. “Well, I suppose you’ve heard about what happened to Bob Benicio,” I began.
Kitty’s face closed. She kept working on the clothing, but her voice was no longer expressive and warm as it had been just a moment before. “That swine,” she said.
It had a familiar ring.
“Did you know him well?” I asked.
“I only met him once or twice, and those friends of his.” She rolled her eyes. “I usually liked Maxie’s friends, but not those…Except Luther. I always felt there was a gentle soul in that boy.”
“I heard he came to see you a few days ago,” I said, recalling Luther’s story.
“Yes. He didn’t know…about Maxie. And he seemed really devastated by the news. I wished I could have told him she was still, well, around. But of course I couldn’t.”
“I know the feeling,” I agreed.
“Luther was the one I wished Maxie had taken up with, out of that crowd.” Kitty scowled. Really. “Not the one she did,” she added.
“I take it you were no fan of Big Bob’s,” I said.
“You could say that,” Kitty said, “if you wanted to be polite. The fact is, I hated him with all my heart.”
Hate? I could see that she would have thought Big Bob inappropriate for her daughter, that she would have been seriously angry with the way Maxie said Big Bob had treated her. But hate? That didn’t seem to be Kitty’s style. “Really?” I said.
Haunted Guest House Mystery 03-Old Haunts Page 9