“So you’ll go?” I wasn’t sure if Luther’s surprise was a good or bad thing.
“Sure.” Now, if I could just stop my teeth from chattering in fear…
“Great. I’ll get us a picnic lunch.” He smiled and went back to slouching on the seat and pretending to be asleep.
A picnic lunch with a biker. Since I’d bought that guesthouse, absolutely nothing in my life had gone the way I’d expected.
“It’s not much to go on,” Paul said. “Another biker stopped coming to the bar at around the same time Big Bob disappeared? That’s pretty thin.”
We were in the attic the next morning, and my friend (and Jeannie’s husband) Tony Mandorisi was there helping me figure out a key problem of my renovation: access. I could build Melissa a wonderful haven, but if she couldn’t get inside it without a boost from the Flying Wallendas, it wasn’t going to do her much good.
Paul was watching the proceedings with a degree of disinterest—when there was a case to be solved, he was almost totally single-minded—while Tony sized up the space and made his “thinking” face. Tony was aware Paul was in the room, but he couldn’t see or hear the ghost. I’d reassured him that Maxie wasn’t present—frankly, Tony’s a little scared of her, so I saw no reason to inform him that she was actually perhaps four feet behind him, lying on her back a foot or two from the ceiling and ignoring him completely.
“Okay, so it’s thin,” I said. Tony looked up, realized I wasn’t talking to him, and started pacing around the attic, looking for a logical place to put a staircase. “But it’s what I’ve been able to do in a short period of time when I was also running a full guesthouse and looking into…other things.” I gave Paul a significant look, and he nodded.
Maxie looked at me, then at him, and twitched her mouth. “What do you mean, ‘other things’?” she asked. “What other things?”
“Nothing that you need concern yourself about,” Paul told her. I felt it was better not to talk directly to Maxie, because I needed Tony to concentrate on the task at hand, and not his unfounded—if understandable—fear of the female dead person in the room.
“I’m not talking to you after that outfit you arranged for me to wear,” I whispered so that Tony wouldn’t hear. “Did that note to your mom say to give me the most embarrassing clothes you owned? They told me you didn’t really wear stuff like that except for the first time you went there.”
“What?” Tony asked.
Maxie stifled a giggle.
“Anyway,” I continued my conversation with Paul as if the exchange with Maxie had not taken place, “I’ll see if I can find out more when Luther takes me for a ride on his hog on Wednesday.” I watched Maxie for a reaction, and got the one I wanted—she looked astonished.
“What?” she shrieked. “You’re going out on a date with Luther? On his bike?”
Paul sputtered a bit as well, and for that matter, so did Tony. “You’re afraid of small cars, and you’re getting on a motorcycle?” Tony asked, chuckling to himself.
“You barely know this man,” Paul protested. He gets testy when I show interest in a man who’s, you know, breathing.
“I’ll be fine,” I told the three of them. It would have been nice if I’d believed it, but I think I made it sound convincing, anyway. “It’ll be an opportunity to find out more about what happened to Big Bob.”
“I don’t see how,” Paul said, pursing his lips. That meant he was back into thinking mode. If it had been a really difficult problem, he’d have stroked his goatee. “Luther is the person who came to us.” Paul likes to think we’re an operating detective agency—in fact, Luther had come to me. “I think you’ve gotten all the information out of him that you’re going to get.”
“Well, what do you think my first move should be, then?” I asked.
“The way I see it, the only real chance for access without taking half the house apart and costing you tens of thousands of dollars is a spiral staircase based down in your bedroom, right below here,” Tony said. “It won’t involve any outside construction and it won’t involve incapacitating a lower bedroom that you need for guests.”
“You still don’t have any facts about the murder,” Paul butted in as soon as there was a gap in the conversation. Okay, so I’d really been asking him the question, but still. “You haven’t spoken to the police and found out what they know yet.”
“I talked to Lieutenant McElone,” I told him.
“Why?” Tony asked. “The police don’t issue building permits in this town.”
“I’m talking to Paul,” I said. “Wait. I’m thinking about the staircase thing.”
“And Lieutenant McElone’s involvement in this case is…?” Paul asked.
He had me. “Okay, nothing. The murder’s being investigated by the Seaside Heights cops and the county prosecutor’s major-crimes division.”
Paul nodded. “So you have to talk to them.”
I rotated my eyes. “I guess so,” I intoned. I hate talking to cops I don’t know. I’m not crazy about talking to McElone, but at least she’s predictable.
“So what about the spiral staircase?” Tony asked when I hadn’t spoken for enough time.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not that I’d mind Melissa having to go through my bedroom on her way to her room, but…”
“But at some point in the future, it could become a problem to have Melissa going through your bedroom on her way to her room, no?” Tony said. He was nodding.
“Not to mention, we wouldn’t be able to get any furniture up there with just a narrow spiral staircase,” I added.
“We got the sheetrock up here,” Tony pointed out.
“Yeah, and we needed a scaffold and four workmen to do it, not to mention that was before the window glass went in, and I had a great big gaping hole to pass it all through.”
“This is so boring!” Maxie whined, and she vanished up through the ceiling to pout on the roof. Normally, she would have found such talk fascinating. The thought of my riding on the back of Luther’s bike must have been too much for her.
“Yeah, I’m going to have to think about this one,” Tony said. “Are you totally against keeping the pull-down stairs, maybe widening them some and making them more stable?”
“I’m not totally against it, but it’s not my favorite idea, either,” I told him.
Paul coughed, which had to be an attention-getting device, since it was pretty much impossible for him to get sick. “About those other things you’ve been looking into…” he began.
“I’m working on it,” I insisted.
“So am I,” Tony said. He walked over to the pull-down stairs in question, and started gingerly down them. “I’ll be in touch.” He waved in a direction completely opposite from Paul’s hovering position. “Bye, Paul,” Tony said.
Paul actually waved back.
“Are you sure you don’t want any help finding Julia?” he asked after Tony’s steps could no longer be heard on the stairs.
“I’m doing this myself,” I told him. “Don’t worry.”
Paul made sure he had my gaze, and said quietly, “It’s important to me, Alison. I need to know if she’s all right.”
“I know it’s important to you,” I told him. “That’s why I need to do it myself.”
Paul nodded significantly. I headed for the stairs down to the second floor. And as I walked, I wondered if I really did want to find Julia MacKenzie.
I was halfway down the stairs when my cell phone buzzed. Now, if someone is calling me, my cell phone rings. If someone is sending me a text message, it buzzes. This is the system set up by Melissa, because I am incapable of figuring out how to make technology do things. I hand it to my ten-year-old daughter, and she takes care of it in less than a minute. It’s efficient, but infuriating.
I realize it’s stupid, but I always get a little jolt when the phone buzzes. I never get text messages, and the sound makes me think an emergency has arisen. So I gasped a little at the buzz, then
calmed myself and looked for the incoming caller’s name.
There wasn’t one. It was from a number I’d never seen before. Great. Someone’s texting me nuisance sales calls now. The march of technology—new ways to annoy people. But on the off chance it was something necessary, I clicked through to the message.
It read, “Big Bob is dead. Stop asking questions, or it can happen to you.”
Thirteen
I recall something about a frantic call to Lieutenant McElone, who asked for the incoming number, punched up some buttons on her computer (I could hear the clacking) and told me the message had come from a prepaid disposable cell phone and couldn’t be traced to an owner, but the good news was that “if you get another one from that number, we might be able to GPS it to whoever’s using it.”
“That’s the good news?” I asked. “What’s the bad news?”
“He’s probably thrown it out and gotten a new one by now.”
I’d been threatened on cases before (okay, one case, when I was investigating Paul’s and Maxie’s murders) and had not developed an immunity to abject terror in the process. So I ran back upstairs and told the ghosts what had happened.
Paul, at first, insisted I quit the Big Bob case immediately. “It’s not worth it,” he said. “We’ve agreed you wouldn’t take a case that involved this kind of risk.”
Maxie lifted a broom to swing at him, but Paul simply vanished and reappeared across the room.
“This happened the day after you met with the bikers at the Sprocket,” Paul pointed out, not missing a beat. “It can’t be a coincidence that the threat came so soon after you showed up last night asking questions about Maxie and Big Bob. I’m guessing it was someone in the bar.”
“I’m guessing I don’t want to live in terror,” I countered. “I’m not interested in dying—no offense.”
“None taken,” Paul said politely.
“So you understand why I think I should drop it.”
“Drop it?” Maxie glared at me. “You promised me!” Melissa had given up that tactic when she was eight.
“Well,” Paul said after a pause, “it might not be necessary to stop asking questions. I’d give it time before I decided.”
“Hold on just a second,” I said, “Are you the same dead guy who said I should give it up a minute ago? What changed your mind?”
“Look. Don’t do anything on the Big Bob case today. Just go see the police in Seaside Heights and tell them what you know. Then leave. That’s not asking questions, and it shouldn’t get you in trouble. But it will get the information to the police there, and maybe that will mean a better level of protection for you.”
Not doing anything—other than passing along information—was definitely my easiest choice, so I took Paul’s advice and decided to call the cops in Seaside Heights. A Detective Ferry deigned to see me later that day. I told the ghosts not to mention the threatening text to Melissa or Mom under any circumstances, and moved on to the investigation that wasn’t currently threatening my life.
The address for Julia MacKenzie I’d gotten from my pal Megan Sharp at Monmouth University was a charming little two-family Colonial in Gilford Park. It sat on the most nondescript street in town, about four blocks from the beach, with the obligatory porch—all the houses down here have one—and an adult man’s bicycle leaning against the side wall.
The problem was, neither of the mailboxes bore the name “MacKenzie,” and although she could have gotten married in the past two years, the prospect of Paul’s ex-love being here was less than optimal. But Paul always said that you follow up on every lead if you want to be a good investigator, so that was precisely what I intended to do.
I rang the bell marked “E. Francisco” first, but got no answer. The one marked “Lamont” was for the upstairs apartment, and when I rang the bell, instead of a person coming to the door, I heard someone call out from above my head, “Somebody there?”
I had to step back from the door to look up, and used my hand to shield my eyes from the sun, which was directly behind the house. There was a woman standing on a parapet, a deck surrounding the upper apartment, and she was calling down to me.
“Hi,” I called up. “I’m looking for a Julia MacKenzie.” Do you have one?
The woman shook her head. “Don’t know anyone by that name here,” she said. “You sure you have the right address?”
Before I could answer, I heard a child shout, “Ma!” behind the woman, and she turned.
“I’ll be right there!” she yelled. “Take off your bathing suit and get in the shower!”
“I think she used to live here,” I shouted up to the woman. “Do you mind if I come up?”
I’m sure she didn’t mean to, but the woman upstairs moaned when I asked. “I really can’t come down to unlock the door right now,” she said. “My four-year-old’s in the shower.” She turned away again and shouted, “And use soap this time!”
Although I certainly understood her plight, screaming up at her wasn’t getting me anywhere. I tried one more time. “How long have you been living here?” I asked.
“We’re just renting for the week,” the woman replied. “Vacation. We’re out of here tomorrow night.” She sounded more exhausted than any person on vacation I had ever heard.
“Who’s the owner of the house?” I tried. “Maybe they’d have some records of the person I’m looking for.”
“The guy downstairs owns the place,” she answered. “Esteban Francisco. But he doesn’t come back until around five.”
I nodded. “Okay, thanks. Have a nice rest of your vacation,” I called as I turned to walk back to the car.
“Uh-huh,” I heard the woman say as she headed inside. “Shampoo, Jason! Shampoo!” Parenting—it’s not just a job; it’s an adventure.
I wrote out a note with my contact information and my question about Julia MacKenzie for Mr. Francisco on a pad of paper I keep in the glove compartment of the Volvo. I also folded a business card—“Kerby Investigations”—into the note. Then I walked back to the house, slipped it under his door (amid youthful cries of “It wasn’t me!” from above), and got back into my pizza oven of a car to ride to Seaside Heights.
It was less than a ten-minute drive, but I had a little time to think. Since Julia MacKenzie apparently no longer lived in the Gilford Park house, where could I look next? The Monmouth University records had only given that address, and there was no telephone number listed. As with most such problems involving any investigation I found myself roped into, I asked myself the key question:
What would Paul do?
I knew from studying that, ordinarily, the key in a missing-persons investigation like this one, where the only contact was the university, would be to hang around there and ask people if they knew Julia MacKenzie: Sooner or later, you hoped, the law of averages would play in your favor. But Julia had been taking classes mostly at night and online, Paul had said. That meant fewer contacts with other people. Still, the records I’d copied had showed a few of the classes she’d taken, and maybe talking to the professors would make a difference. Even the online ones would know, at least, how well she’d done on her course work. That wouldn’t tell me where she was, but it might lead to some better understanding of her personality and her mindset, which could lead me to her. Maybe.
The other place to go was CableCom, in Freehold, Julia’s last-known employer. That was a longer drive, but maybe an initial inquiry on the phone would be useful. If I could find her supervisor or some coworkers, I might get more information. I’d ask Paul if they’d had any mutual friends; I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought to do that yet.
And after living with the idea of the scary text message for a few hours, I decided not to be intimidated by some unseen jerk whose only demonstrable talent so far was that he could type with his thumbs. I was made of sterner stuff than this! I’d press on with the plan, and then cower in my bedroom under the covers tonight. That seemed reasonable.
By the time my thou
ght process had gotten that far, I’d already reached Seaside Heights and was pulling into the parking lot at the municipal complex. Which gives you a general idea of how short that drive really was.
Once inside, it was not a difficult task to find Detective Martin Ferry, who had been assigned (or as the cops put it, “caught”) the investigation into Big Bob Benicio’s death. Getting Detective Ferry to talk, on the other hand, was not going to be as simple as falling off a log, assuming one was silly enough to climb onto a log in the first place.
“I don’t care if you’re Philip Marlowe; I don’t have to talk to you about an ongoing investigation if I don’t want to,” the charming detective said after twenty minutes of negotiation over whether I could actually enter his office and speak to him. “There’s no law that says I have to give out information to private detectives.”
“There’s no law that says Dunkin’ Donuts has to sell bagels, and yet they all do,” I pointed out. “What’s it going to hurt if I try to help your investigation along?” It wasn’t just that Ferry, an average-height man with a prodigious stomach, intimidated me. It was more that I’d called ahead and made an appointment, and still he was acting like I’d barged in unannounced and insisted I was a better detective than he was. On the contrary, I was convinced that I wasn’t a better detective than anybody.
“I’ll tell you what it’s going to hurt,” he said, sitting down in a squeaky chair behind his desk and half sneering at me. “You’re going to bother witnesses I need to talk to, and that will make them less willing to talk to me. You’re going to expect things like ME reports and filed police documents that you have no right to see. You’re going to muddy the waters with suspects and drop pieces of information that I don’t want dropped. I’ve worked with PIs before, and I’ve been burned too many times. Go away.”
I stared at him a moment. “It’s because I’m a woman, isn’t it?”
Ferry heaved a sigh and put his head in his hands. “No, it’s not because you’re a woman,” he said. “I have no problem with women. My old partner was a woman, and we got along just fine. My problem is that you’re not a cop, and anybody who’s not a cop is just going to get in the way on this kind of investigation.”
Haunted Guest House Mystery 03-Old Haunts Page 11