The Thrill of the Haunt Read online

  That wasn’t good.

  Suffice it to say, I was not in a genial mood when I entered the house. And it didn’t get much better when Mom informed me that after Melissa had talked her into a trip to the local ice cream parlor, Ice Queen, she’d gone to bed with an upset stomach.

  “You know she gets that way when she has too much ice cream at night,” I scolded Mom. Let’s be clear—on a normal evening, I would probably have caved and taken Liss to Ice Queen myself, but I was not in a forgiving state of mind and needed to let out my frustration on somebody. Who better than Mom?

  “Don’t scold your mother,” Dad’s voice came from behind me. “Grandmothers are supposed to spoil little girls, or have you forgotten that?” I hadn’t even known he was in the house tonight, but then, of course, he would follow Mom here on a night she was watching Liss.

  “Sure, take her side,” I snarled at him as Paul ascended from the basement. “If Grandma had gotten me sick when I was eleven, you’d have been all over her in a heartbeat.”

  “She’s right, Jack,” my mother chipped in. She’ll defend me even when I’m attacking her. Why did it make me angrier?

  “Alison, Maxie has found something,” Paul began, but I wasn’t listening.

  I didn’t answer Mom, mostly because Tom and Libby Hill walked in asking about any all-night diners available in the area. The Hills thanked me and went out to search for a late-night omelet. And Paul once again began, “Alison, there’s something you need to see.”

  Mom and Dad looked at me, expecting a response.

  “You handle it,” I told Paul. “You’re the brains of the outfit. You take on cases when I don’t want to get involved. You get me in danger when all I want is to run a quiet little guesthouse. So I’m handing all responsibility for the investigation back to you. If there’s something that needs to be done outside the house, you’d better make a really strong case, because otherwise I’ll be assuming the investigator at 123 Seafront is handling it, and that’s not me.”

  Mom’s mouth was open in shock, and Dad seemed to be trying to figure out what I really meant because clearly, it couldn’t be what I’d just said.

  Paul did not move a facial muscle, then vanished.

  “Was that really necessary?” Dad asked finally.

  “Yes,” I said, without any confidence that it was.

  But truthfully, I felt better—at least I did until Melissa called from upstairs, saying she’d thrown up in her room. Mom looked sheepish and offered to help, but I waved her off and headed upstairs myself.

  That was my job—being a mother.

  Not investigating crimes.

  Thirteen

  The rest of the night was spent trying to get my daughter to take an Alka-Seltzer, something she was inexplicably reluctant to do, and then simply sitting with her and holding a cold cloth to her forehead until she fell asleep. Four times.

  By the time I got to bed, it was almost time to wake up. I usually straighten up the house before the guests awaken, so my mornings begin early. And despite my desperate desire to get some rest, last night’s dinner with Josh weighed on my mind and kept me from falling asleep.

  Melissa woke at her regular time for school and said she was feeling better. I considered suggesting she stay home and rest up, but she seemed eager to see her friends, and she had a vocabulary test that morning. So after determining that she could in fact hold down cereal, I drove her to school. Personally, I’d have liked to get in twelve or thirteen uninterrupted hours myself, but responsibilities called, like making sure my guests were having the vacation they had paid someone else (who was paying me a percentage) to have.

  So you can imagine how great I felt when the time for the morning spook show arrived and Paul did not.

  “He’s pissed at you,” Maxie reported after she had done a decent job of simulating two ghosts for the price of one by kicking pictures on the wall with her feet while shaking the chandelier in the hallway with her hands. She also took a comb out of Cybill’s hair and honked a claxon horn she’d found in my basement. It was a game attempt, but we were lucky to have had only three audience members—Harry, Beth and Cybill—to astound this particular morning; the Hills, having sampled the fabled shore cuisine late last night, were still asleep. And Cybill, rather than seeming entertained, appeared quite annoyed with the comb-grabbing (something I would have warned Maxie about if I had been fully awake), grumbling that it was “unnatural” to allow such a creature unfettered access to my home.

  Because I’m a good innkeeper, I didn’t respond with the fact that I wouldn’t have known how to fetter Maxie if I’d wanted to (which sometimes I did).

  “I get that he’s upset,” I told Maxie in the game room, which I was assessing for the nine billionth time and achieving the same unhelpful result. “He thinks I was rude to him last night, and he’s upset. But missing a show—”

  “He didn’t miss the show because he’s upset,” she informed me. “He missed the show because he says you told him that the deal’s off. If you don’t want to be a detective, he doesn’t want to put on spook shows.” How dare he actually expect me to keep my word!

  “What do you think would get him back?” I asked Maxie. Asking Maxie for advice—just goes to show how completely at sea my mind was at that moment. Fatigue is a funny thing, except when you have it.

  “Get back on the cases,” she suggested. She looked around the room. “You’re sure you don’t want a home theater in here? It would be really cool.”

  “Yes, I’m sure. This is a quiet guesthouse, not a drive-in movie,” I snapped.

  “Somebody didn’t get enough sleep last night,” she singsonged.

  “Paul said you’d found something last night,” I said, ignoring both the game-room question and my lack of sleep. “Was it about the Boffice marriage thing?”

  Maxie was looking at the walls like they were bacon and she was a hungry basset hound. She’d come up with a better idea for the room than me if it . . . well, that ship had sailed. “No, it was the homeless-guy-murder thing,” she answered.

  “Well?”

  Maxie put on a very unconvincing surprised expression. “I thought you were off that case,” she said.

  “I was. Am. That doesn’t mean I’m not curious. What’d you find?”

  Maxie, despite her protestations that she hates the work, loves being recognized for her research skills. She practically beamed at me. “There was something in the homeless guy’s ex-wife’s military records,” she said.

  “Brenda Leskanik?” I asked. “Everett’s ex-wife? What was in her . . . wait, you can hack military records?”

  “Not the classified ones or anything. These ones were more or less a matter of public record, but you have to know where to look.” Maxie allowed herself a moment to bask in her brilliance, and I allowed her a moment during which I did not groan melodramatically at her egotism. It was a good moment for both of us.

  “So what was there?” I reminded her.

  “Her discharge from the Army was a little odd,” Maxie answered.

  “Dishonorable?”

  She shook her head. “Medical.”

  That was interesting. “Was Brenda wounded in action?” I asked.

  Again Maxie shook her head. “No record of an incident.”

  “Was she ill? She’s still alive, so it couldn’t have been too bad.”

  “Oh, she recovered all right,” Maxie said, playing the moment for all it was worth. “She requested an honorable discharge rather than waiting it out and left the Army a little more than three years before her husband. And she got better all of a sudden about seven and a half months later.”

  Seven and a half . . . “Whoa. Brenda was pregnant?”

  Maxie waved her eyebrows up and down. “Give the woman a cigar,” she said. “She gave birth to a healthy eight-pound, two-ounce baby boy.”

  “Who would now be—”

  “Thirty-four years old,” Maxie said.

  “Wait, then he’d have
been listed among Everett’s next of kin, wouldn’t he?” I’d prove her wrong, even if there was no reason to.

  “The son, Randall, disowned Everett,” Maxie answered. “Took his mother’s last name.”

  “Did you find an address for him? For Brenda?”

  “Brenda’s living in Old Bridge,” Maxie reported. Old Bridge was a town about forty minutes away. “There’s something screwy about Randall’s records, but I haven’t figured it out yet.”

  “We can’t follow Dave and go to Old Bridge the same day,” I mused aloud. “I have to be able to see to the guests. I’ll call Brenda today, if you can find a phone number, and try to arrange to see her tomorrow.”

  “I thought you were off the case,” Maxie teased again.

  “Shut up,” I said. I was in a witty mood.

  • • •

  David Boffice did not leave his office for lunch as he had the two previous days. For a guy whose wife insisted he was as predictable as Big Ben’s chimes, Dave was being insistently uncooperative with the woman trying to follow him to his mistress’s house.

  “Maybe he’s brown-bagging it today,” Maxie suggested from somewhere in the backseat. I didn’t turn around to see what she was doing.

  “That doesn’t help,” I pointed out.

  “You invited me,” she pointed right back.

  It was true; I’d asked Maxie to come with me. Maybe it was the idea that Paul was so upset he wasn’t talking to me, which was new. Maybe it was my thinking that we might go back to the Fuel Pit after this, and I’d rather have Maxie measure the bathroom window than do it myself. Maybe, truth be known, I just didn’t want to be by myself on a stakeout.

  I had a Carly Simon CD on the stereo, not turned up very high, and she was singing about how she and a lover (pick one) had “no secrets.” I started looking through the console between the seats for another CD.

  “Get something more rockin’,” Maxie suggested, which made me immediately start looking for James Taylor or Jim Croce, just to irritate her. I found neither and instead inserted a compilation Melissa had made for me so “you’ll have something that was recorded after color TV was invented,” which was not only insulting but also historically inaccurate.

  Guster started playing a song, and while it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, I had to be impressed with the maturity of my daughter’s taste, or what she suspected was mine. Even Maxie stopped, considered saying something derogatory, realized it was from Melissa, and smiled at the music.

  “You have a great kid,” she said out of nowhere.

  “I like to think so.”

  “I mean it,” the ghost continued. “If I’d had a daughter . . .” Maxie doesn’t often talk about what might have been if she’d been allowed to live. She sees her mother, Kitty, about once a week, and they communicate via text message and computer screen, but they never discuss what didn’t get to happen.

  “She’s a special girl,” I said. “I’m very lucky.”

  “Do you want to have more kids?” Maxie asked. Maxie and subtlety have met, but they don’t speak the same language. She barges through conversational walls the way she flies through the material ones: without thought for consequences and always assuming she’s right.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “I haven’t thought about it.” Well, maybe I had, but it really wasn’t something I felt like discussing with Maxie.

  “Sure you have,” she said, clucking. “You might not talk about it, but I guarantee you’ve thought about it. Especially now that this guy is around.”

  “His name is Josh. Use it.” I didn’t want to mention that I had no idea if he’d be “around” anymore. I intended to call him later today, if I was ever alone. What I’d tell him would be . . . an excellent question. I’d have to give that some thought.

  “Fine. Since Josh is around. You like him more than you’ve liked anybody else I’ve seen you with, even your ex.”

  “Especially my ex. Can we stop talking about this now?”

  “Why?” Good Lord, she meant it.

  “Because we’re here to watch a guy go visit his mistress, not to discuss my personal life.”

  “I don’t see why we can’t do both. Do you want to marry Josh?” I’d like to point out here that Melissa, who was eleven years old, did not ever ask me questions like this. And I would have answered her.

  Luckily, Dave bailed me out by emerging from the glass building and heading for his car. “We’re off,” I said, putting the Volvo into gear.

  “Some more than others,” Maxie muttered.

  The third time appeared to be the charm: This time we actually headed in the direction of Joyce Kinsler’s home, a town house in a development in Eatontown. And Dave did not diverge from the route the British GPS lady had set for that very destination.

  “I think we’ve hit pay dirt this time,” I said.

  “I’ve heard that before,” Maxie answered.

  The town house development, Seaside Manors, was not grand, but it was serviceable. There were clearly spots where trees had been before the storm, still indentations in the ground. A woman like Joyce, with a decent job but not a wildly lucrative career, could probably afford a place like this without feeling as if she were living beyond her means. And maybe it was because of Maxie’s recent interrogation, but I also noted that it was very much the kind of place where single people and childless couples would live; there was no sign of a playground, no minivans parked in driveways, no strollers left folded by front doors.

  Dave drove directly to Joyce’s address, which was handy since it looked just like every other address in the complex, and I’d never have been able to find it alone, British lady or no British lady. I drove past Joyce’s unit, turned the next corner, and then parked the car with maximum view of her front door.

  “He’s going in,” I said to myself.

  “No kidding,” Maxie said. I’d forgotten she was there; she’d been silent during the drive, which was uncharacteristic of her.

  Dave rang the doorbell and waited. But the door did not open. So Dave waited some more. Apparently he didn’t have a key, which I found surprising.

  “Maybe it’s the wrong day,” Maxie suggested. “Maybe he was supposed to come the day he went for hot dogs instead.”

  I was looking through the binoculars and seeing Dave stand there not doing anything. “I don’t know. It’s weird that he doesn’t have a key if they really have this long-term relationship, and it’s weirder still that she’s not answering the door if she’s expecting him.”

  “Maybe they don’t, and she’s not.” Maxie likes the simple solutions.

  “Go up there and see if you can see anything,” I told her.

  “No, you go up there. I went up there for the mom.”

  “You can be more surreptitious than I can,” I explained.

  “I can’t be anything if I don’t know the word.”

  “Sneaky. You can be sneaky.”

  Dave checked his watch.

  “Uh-uh,” Maxie insisted. “You want to take a picture of him gettin’ busy with the girlfriend, you do it. I’m not the PI.” Maxie wasn’t making it easy.

  The bickering might have gone on for months with neither of us leaving the car, but Dave took matters into his own hands. Having waited long enough, he had the presence of mind to try the doorknob, which must have turned because the door opened and Dave walked into the unit.

  “Are you going over there or what?” Maxie said after a second. “Helen wants pictures to blackmail her husband with.”

  “And how am I supposed to get them?” I asked defensively, knowing Maxie was right. “I’m not going inside, and there are no windows except in the front; it’s an attached row house. If they’re not doing . . . whatever they’re doing . . . in the front room, I have no view.”

  “Fine. You go back and tell Helen that you can’t actually prove her husband’s cheating on her because you’re too much of a wimp to do what she’s paying you to do.” Maxie stretched
her legs into the engine.

  My teeth were grinding. I hate it when Maxie is right. “Fine,” I squeezed out between my jaws. “I’m going.” I grabbed the camera from my tote bag and got out of the car. I shot Maxie a glance. “I’m not leaving the keys, so you can’t listen to the radio.” That told her.

  I was still left with the question of how to photograph people who were not within my line of sight. Maxie, of course, could have slipped into the house with the camera in any number of possible pockets, taken the necessary pictures, and been back in the car in a minute, but convincing her to do so would have taken so much time, Helen and Dave would be celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary before she’d get the photos, and what fun would there be in that?

  Once again, Dave saved my bacon, but not in the way one would expect. He burst out the door of Joyce’s town house, leaving the door wide open, with an expression of pure and absolute panic on his face. I was about halfway to the front door when he ran out, and I was briefly worried that he might notice me, but he tore to his car so quickly, he didn’t even have time to glance in my direction. He had started the car and pulled out of the driveway, doing everything but burning rubber, before I could even react.

  I stood there watching his car drive up the road and out of sight. It never so much as occurred to me to get back to the Volvo to follow him.

  “That was quick.” Maxie said, appearing at my side. She misses nothing that is shoved directly into her face.

  “Too quick,” I answered. “He looked like he’d seen . . .”

  “Me?” Maxie asked.

  “Not you specifically.”

  We stood—okay, I stood and Maxie hovered—there for a long moment before she said what both of us were thinking. “I guess you should go in and see what’s going on, huh?”

  Well, a variation on what we were both thinking, anyway. “I was thinking maybe you should go in and see what’s going on because Joyce wouldn’t be able to see you.”