The Thrill of the Haunt Page 16

  There wasn’t time for Paul and me to strategize further, because Josh arrived, on time as always, for the dinner Mom and Melissa were busily preparing in my kitchen (which would no doubt be cleaner after they cooked than it had been after I’d cleaned it). He’d said hello to them on the way, as he entered through the kitchen door after parking his car behind the house.

  I told him all I knew about Joyce Kinsler’s death and the little that had happened regarding my investigation into Everett’s. We talked about our respective days, and while the mood wasn’t chilly, it had the air more of two friendly acquaintances catching up than people who’d been dating for months. Josh seemed to be studying me, watching for a sign of something I couldn’t identify, and I wanted to tell him about the ghosts in the house and couldn’t find the words. This wasn’t good.

  Melissa came in to tell us that dinner was ready, and the four of us—with occasional intrusions by Paul and Maxie, who wanted to discuss investigations and make comments about Josh, respectively—had dinner quietly and without serious incident. Which I guess was a plus.

  It was all so civil and unexceptional that by the time we’d gotten through clearing the table, I was convinced that Josh would never come back, and that was making me sadder than I would probably have anticipated.

  That was it, I decided—tonight I’d tell him about the ghosts. If he was going to run off screaming into the night, at least it would be because he knew the truth.

  Of course, the first thing I had to do was get rid of all the other people, living and dead, in the house. Which could prove tricky, especially since guests were starting to return from their dinner excursions.

  “Maybe Josh and I will go out and get some ice cream for dessert,” I suggested as I started the dishwasher. Mom and Liss, who had been accepting accolades and discussing how to cook beef short ribs (that had been the surprise entrée, and it was excellent) and macaroni and cheese, stopped for a second to consider what I was saying.

  Josh must have sensed that I wanted to talk to him in private. He is a very intuitive man. “Sounds like a good idea,” he said. “Let me get my jacket, and we can get going.”

  “Ice cream?” Mom said. “Isn’t that a little heavy after that whole dinner?”

  In my family, turning down a dessert is a sign that someone has been diagnosed with a terminal disease. I stared at her. “Really?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” Melissa chimed in. “I’m thinking of skipping dessert tonight. Why don’t we get out the karaoke machine?”

  I looked over at Josh, who didn’t seem nearly as confused as I was but who certainly was not pleased by this turn of events. “Is something wrong, Liss?” I said.

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  “Because the last time you turned down dessert you had to have your appendix out.” Out of deference to my daughter’s level of embarrassment, I chose not to mention her recent ice-cream-related stomach problems.

  “No,” my daughter lied, “I’m just in the mood for some singing. Let’s get the machine out; what do you say?”

  Paul looked at me and shrugged. Whatever this gambit was about, nobody had brought him into the loop. Maxie looked bored, which meant it wasn’t about her.

  I pursed my lips. It was involuntary, I swear. “I say something’s up, and you’re not telling me about it.”

  I noticed an interesting look on Josh’s face after I said that.

  Melissa nodded. “I didn’t want to say anything, because I thought you’d get upset.”

  “I’m already upset. What?”

  Mom pointed to the front door. “Out there,” she said. “Don’t get upset.”

  Clearly, they believed whatever was out there would upset me. Subtle, no? “What, out there?” I asked.

  “Let’s take a look,” Josh said and headed for the door before anyone could argue with him. I was right on his heels.

  We walked out onto the porch and looked out into the street. A car went by, which wasn’t unusual. The lawn had been mown fairly recently. This, too, was hardly cause to keep me inside the house. But Mom and Melissa, presumably because they didn’t want to upset me, stayed inside and did not attempt to explain themselves.

  Maxie showed up and looked out into the street. “I don’t see anything,” she said.

  Paul, still observing Mom and Melissa, had not yet started toward the door. He probably was looking for telltale signs of conspiracy. He always said it was best to watch the subject when they were focused elsewhere; it was the time they were least conscious of their reactions. But he didn’t seem to be getting anything useful.

  I looked at Josh and shrugged. “They’re my family,” I said. “I suppose I should be concerned.”

  “Every family has some quirks,” he said. “Mine has a guy who got his MBA and then decided to buy into a paint store.” It was the first glint of humor from him since before our “celebratory” dinner, and I was glad to see it.

  Harry and Beth Rosen started up the walk and saw at least two of us on the porch. We greeted them, and Harry shook his head. “You hate to see this in such a nice neighborhood,” he said.

  That was an interesting opening line, so I suppose there was a moment when Josh and I looked blankly at them. “Something wrong?” I asked.

  Behind me I heard Maxie gasp, then growl a little. I turned.

  Painted on the wall next to my front door, in the same red marker that had proved so difficult to get off my paneling in the game room, had been scrawled, “FLEE, MORTALS! THERE BE GHOSTS HERE!”

  Mom appeared at my left shoulder. “We just didn’t want you to be upset,” she repeated. I ignored her.

  Josh and I took in the sight. I didn’t look at his face. I was too busy trying to get my jaw to unclench.

  “That’s it,” I said. “Now they’ve pissed me off.”

  Nineteen

  “It wasn’t me,” Cybill Hobsen said. “I have no idea why you would think it was me.”

  Despite Paul’s pleas for restraint, Mom’s reminder to act professional and Josh’s clear desire to get away somewhere and talk, I had given in to my impulse to confront Cybill in her room.

  “You have been disappointed with me for not asking you to ‘cleanse’ my house of ghosts,” I reminded her through the tiny opening I could manage between my lips. “I insisted the spirits here were not dangerous, but you disagreed. This was your way of trying to prove me wrong.”

  “It most certainly was not,” Cybill responded. “But if you wish, I will pack my things and find my way back home. I will, however, feel it necessary to report your conduct to Mr. Rance at Senior Plus Tours. I don’t appreciate being accused of vandalism.”

  “You didn’t find a red marker in her belongings,” said Paul, floating just behind me and being an irritating purveyor of conscience. “It’s entirely possible she didn’t write either message.”

  I forced myself to exhale and softened my voice. “I really hope you won’t do that, Cybill,” I said. “Please don’t leave.”

  “I don’t know.” Now she was playing coy. “I don’t want to stay if I’m not welcome here.”

  “Of course you’re welcome,” I said, wondering if I meant that even a little. “I was upset at finding graffiti on my house, and I overreacted. Can we try to go on as if this unfortunate scene hadn’t happened, please?” There are times even I am appalled at how quick I am to pander to a paying customer.

  “That depends,” Cybill said.

  Depends? “On what?” I asked before I could think it all the way through.

  My phone vibrated in my pocket. I resisted the urge to pull it out. Whoever was calling would have to wait until I’d defused this situation, the one that I had fused in the first place.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to cleanse the house?” she asked.

  “I’m quite sure. It wasn’t any spirit that lives in this house who wrote those words, I assure you.” Even Maxie wouldn’t have done that; she had too healthy a respect for the integ
rity of the house. She never would have defaced it.

  Cybill, predictably, looked disappointed. “I still think a quick ritual would heal the house,” she said. I didn’t know the house was sick, but I did not comment on that.

  “Tell you what,” I countered. “Suppose we schedule a ceremony for Sunday night, before everyone goes home. Not one that would banish the ghosts from the house, but one that would protect it from outside entities. Can you do something like that?”

  Her face brightened visibly. “I can!” she said. “I would be delighted to seal this house from outside spirits.” I made a mental note to be sure that Dad was here before the ceremony began, on the one-in-a-million chance that Cybill could actually do what she said she could.

  “That would be wonderful,” I told her. “I’m so grateful.”

  “I’ll begin preparing immediately,” Cybill said and went into her closet. “I might need a different robe.”

  I walked out of her room and started down the stairs. I heard Paul behind me say, “You might just be successful at the hospitality business yet.”

  “But not the investigation business,” I said quietly.

  “You’re getting better all the time.”

  “We’re nowhere on anything,” I reminded him.

  “That’s usually when we do our best work.” Paul has a somewhat rosier picture of our attempts at detection than I do.

  I walked downstairs, where Melissa was bringing Harry and Beth some coffee, and went back out onto the porch. Josh was still out there, closely examining the red words on the clapboard next to my front door.

  “What do you think, Doctor?” I asked him. “Will the patient survive?”

  “I wish it were paint,” he said. “That would be easier to remove. This might actually require something on the order of sandblasting to get down to a surface that will be free of the marker, and that would mean you’d have to repaint the whole exterior of the house.”

  That sounded tedious and fairly expensive. I was not pleased, and I must have looked it. “Luckily, you have a friend in the paint business,” Josh said.

  I wasn’t sure what that meant. “A friend?” I asked.

  And my cell phone rang again. I pulled it out just to check and saw that the caller was Phyllis Coates at the Harbor Haven Chronicle. I made a low sound in my throat. “I’m sorry,” I told Josh. “I have to take this.” He nodded, his face impassive. “Just hang on.”

  Phyllis sounded rushed, which isn’t the least bit unusual. “I’m just getting this, but it might help you,” she said. “There’s been no arrest yet, but I know the cops have interest in someone for Everett Sandheim’s murder.”

  I immediately thought of Brenda Leskanik, Everett’s ex-wife, but I realized that was because she had the only reason I knew of to be mad at him. And she hadn’t really seemed all that mad. “Who are they looking at?” I asked Phyllis.

  “Marv Winderbrook,” she said. “The owner of the Fuel Pit.”

  What possible motivation could Marv have to kill a homeless man in his gas station’s men’s room? “Why?”

  “Mostly because they don’t seem to have any other suspects,” Phyllis answered. “But also because Marv had applied for a restraining order to keep Everett from using the restroom at his station.”

  “I think I need to talk to Marv,” I said wearily. It had been the one thing too many while I juggled two cases and a complement of guests.

  “You’d better hurry,” Phyllis said. “He could be in jail by morning.”

  “You think I need to go tonight?” I looked at Josh, who managed with Herculean effort not to roll his eyes at all.

  “Hey, you’re the private eye,” she answered. “I just write for the local rag.” That’s Phyllis for yes.

  In my mind’s ear, I groaned. Outwardly, I said, “You don’t happen to know where he lives, do you?”

  “Right behind the station,” Phyllis said. I could hear the smile in her voice, and one day I would have to get her for that.

  I disconnected the call and looked at Josh. “I really want to stay here and talk to you. You need to understand that.”

  “I could come with you,” he said.

  I wished he could. But if I was going back to the Fuel Pit, and I really needed to do the measurements on the bathroom window, then I needed to take another passenger with me. That could be Josh, certainly. But if there was ghostly activity in the restroom, he wouldn’t see it, and I’d be inside talking to Marv.

  I needed to go with Maxie.

  So reluctantly—make that very reluctantly—I shook my head. “This one I really need to do by myself,” I told Josh. “It’s business.”

  His face closed off like it had at the restaurant. “Fine,” he said.

  “Believe me, it’s not—”

  “I know. It’s not that you don’t want to stay, but you can’t. And you can’t really explain why that’s the way it is, right?” He sounded sad, rather than angry.

  “I don’t have time. You have to take me on faith this one last time. I want to be here. I want to talk to you. I will talk to you, hopefully as soon as I get back. And I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. But right now I have a narrow window of opportunity, and I just don’t have the time for anything else. I don’t think you’re the kind of guy who wouldn’t be able to understand that. Are you?”

  “I’m not sure,” Josh said.

  That was a body blow. “You’re not?”

  “No. That last sentence was so twisted I’m not sure what you’re asking me. Am I not the kind of guy who wouldn’t understand? What does that mean?” He allowed the hint of a smile to peek out from under his frown.

  A small amount of hope perked me up. “Stay here,” I urged him. “Hang out with Mom and Liss if you want. As soon as I come back, we’ll talk.”

  The smile faded. “I don’t think so,” Josh said. “I have to get up early. We can talk tomorrow. Right?”

  I nodded. But I couldn’t say anything.

  • • •

  “I’m not going back in that bathroom,” Maxie insisted.

  She hovered lightly over the passenger seat of the Volvo and stared at me, but I was driving and watching the road. “Nobody’s asking you to,” I told her. “I just want you to take this tape measure and get the dimensions of the window. You can do that from the outside.” I had taken a tape measure from my toolbox, and now I extended it to her. She hid it in the pocket of the trench coat she liked to wear when we were out on what she had taken to calling a “mission.”

  “If there’s somebody inside, I’m not looking,” Maxie said.

  “Please don’t. I don’t want somebody inside to see a flying tape measure. That’s all I need.” I turned right. The Fuel Pit was at the end of the street on my left. At this time of the evening, there was no problem finding a space to park directly across the street. “I don’t see you rushing in to check it out,” Maxie told me.

  “I’m going to be in the back talking to Marv,” I reminded her. “Try not to be too loud.”

  I’d actually called Marv and asked if I could come over to talk, and since he knew me from being around town (I often point guests to his station, and Marv knows that), he agreed but sounded puzzled about the reason for my visit. I’d told him I was coming as a private investigator but not that I’d heard he was the prime suspect in Everett’s murder. There are things one simply doesn’t mention, darling.

  “Just get the dimensions,” I reminded Maxie. “You don’t need to do any more than that.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t,” she assured me. And then she was gone.

  I met Marv in what he called his sitting room, which was a studio apartment of sorts in what had obviously once been a garage behind the Fuel Pit. He had closed the Fuel Pit for the night. Many of the area’s gas stations are open 24/7, but Marv runs the place almost entirely by himself and isn’t on a major highway, so with the gas rationing after the storm he started closing at nine every evening and never stopped. He is a
tall, thin, scrawny-looking man with an Adam’s apple that could be seen from space, but he had combed his hair and was wearing jeans and a polo shirt instead of his usual oily overalls. He was trying, and I appreciated it.

  “I told the police everything I saw, and I gave them the security tapes,” he told me once I mentioned Everett’s name. “I don’t know what else I can tell you, Alison.”

  “Tell me why you were requesting a restraining order against Everett,” I said. No sense in beating around the bush.

  Marv waved a hand; the whole thing was irrelevant. “I wasn’t really going to go to court,” he said. “I just wanted a piece of paper to show Everett so he wouldn’t spend his days in my men’s room, keeping actual customers away, you know? Some days he’d just set up shop in there like it was the Waldorf. I started to feel like I should bring him room service.”

  “When did that start?” I asked. “I never saw him anywhere except outside the Stud Muffin.”

  “Two, maybe three months ago,” Marv estimated, his eyes rolling up as he grasped for the figure. “I’d let him go in and, you know, clean up every once in a while, but all of a sudden it was a regular thing with him, and he’d stay in there a really long time. I don’t like to think about what he might have been doing.”

  Now that he brought it up, I didn’t want to think about it, either. “Still, going to the police department and filing a petition, even if you didn’t intend to go through with it, was pretty serious,” I suggested.

  Marv thought about that and nodded, conceding the point. “The fact is, the last few months Everett started creeping me out,” he said.

  I heard a scraping noise outside the window and looked, but there was no sign of Maxie. I wondered if she was doing something to the window that would draw attention to herself, but Marv didn’t seem to notice, so I just plowed on. “Creeping you out?” I asked.

  “He started telling me he was hearing ghosts,” he said. “I mean, no offense, Alison, but that’s fairly creepy.” It was lovely how the locals respected my position in town.