The Thrill of the Haunt Page 4

  Helen’s mouth twitched, and for a tiny moment she actually seemed amused. “Dave had a drug problem when he was younger,” she said. “He went through rehab. I’ve never seen him so much as take a sip of wine.”

  “People relapse,” I said.

  “Not Dave. He’s exactly the same as he was the day I met him. Except he’s being unfaithful. And yes, I know who she is, if that was your next question.” Paul nodded, as if he were having the conversation with Helen himself.

  “Who is she, and how do you know?” I asked. Paul gave me an approving glance—he says I’ve been getting better at anticipating the questions he wants me to ask—then focused on Helen again.

  “Her name is Joyce Kinsler,” Helen said without hesitation, her unemotional armor back on. “I’ve seen e-mails he didn’t delete from his laptop and watched him field phone calls from her—the name appears on his iPhone before he picks up—when we’re together. She’s one of his clients. She works for a payroll management company in Freehold, Human Solutions.” She chuckled without amusement. “I think I might have sent them a résumé at one time or another.”

  “Push her a little,” Paul said. Just then, Maxie, who apparently had been watching, maybe from the roof, descended onto the lawn next to us, wearing her traditional sprayed-on blue jeans and a black T-shirt with the legend “It Wasn’t Me” across her chest.

  “Couldn’t your husband have been e-mailing and talking business with Ms. Kinsler?” I asked.

  Helen shook her head. “My husband is an excellent businessman, Ms. Kerby, but he’s a terrible flirt, and I mean that literally. He’s bad at it. The texts, the cell calls, the e-mails—he could barely keep from giggling when he sent them. This was definitely not business. I saw one of the e-mails he sent, and believe me, they weren’t talking business.” She stared off for a moment. “She’s older than him, too. Maybe ten years.” She shook her head.

  “Why—” Paul began, but I had my own question, and I asked it before he could finish his sentence.

  “Why do you need me to confirm this for you if you know what he’s doing and with whom he’s doing it?” I asked, noting my excellent syntax. “New Jersey has no-fault divorce. You don’t need evidence.”

  Paul pointed at me and said, “Excellent. Just what I was going to ask.”

  Helen looked startled. She hadn’t heard Paul, of course, but it turned out that my question had taken her by surprise. “Oh, I don’t intend to divorce Dave, Ms. Kerby,” she said.

  Paul and I exchanged a glance, which may have looked odd to Helen, but she said nothing. I was choosing not to relate Maxie’s reaction; suffice it to say it was the spelled-out version of initials frequently seen on the Internet when something surprising happens. I’ll leave it at that.

  “You don’t want a divorce?” I said when I regained the use of my vocal cords.

  Helen stuck out her lower lip in an expression that I usually see from Melissa, accompanied by “Duh . . .” But instead, Helen said, “Certainly not. I’m perfectly happy with the life we had before he started seeing this woman, and I intend to get that life back.”

  Have you ever felt as if you were the slow-witted cousin at the Mensa family reunion? “How are you going to do that?” I asked. “And what do my services have to do with it?”

  Helen might have been mentally considering alternatives to my services (which would have actually been okay with me), but she simply said, “You catch him in the act, and I let him know I have evidence of his indiscretion. He’ll fall back in line.”

  “You’re going to use whatever I find to blackmail your husband into giving up his mistress?” Okay, so mistress wasn’t a word I use often, but this conversation was going in directions I hadn’t expected, and I was winging it.

  “I don’t think I’d characterize it as blackmail, but that’s essentially what I had in mind, yes,” Helen told me.

  I stole another glance at Paul, who was looking a little stunned, but when he saw me looking at him, he held out his hands and changed his expression to a pleading one. “I know it’s not what we usually do, but I could really use a case,” he said.

  “Besides, this one sounds like a hoot,” Maxie added, and Paul’s look in return indicated she should go back to spelling out Internet expressions.

  “If you wouldn’t call it blackmail, what would you call it?” I asked Helen.

  She thought for a moment and answered, “Leverage.”

  It was all I could do not to glare at Paul again, but a repeat of that motion would no doubt draw a question from the woman who, against my better judgment, was about to become our latest client.

  I sighed. “Okay. Fill out our intake form, and write down all the details you can think of. Give me your address and your husband’s work address,” I said.

  “Ask her to also include an approximation of her husband’s daily schedule, where he goes for lunch, whether he often stops for a drink on his way home, that sort of thing,” Paul added.

  “So you’ll take the case?” Helen said.

  “You’ve already paid for it,” I admitted. “It doesn’t seem like I have a choice.” And that time, I did risk a glance in Paul’s direction.

  He looked thrilled.

  Five

  “So let me get this straight,” Josh Kaplan said. “This woman wants you to catch her husband cheating so he won’t divorce her?”

  “That’s about the size of it,” I answered.

  Josh and I have known each other since we were kids, but we’d only recently reconnected. We’d lost touch around the time we both graduated high school. That, for me, was two colleges, one marriage, three jobs and a daughter ago. For him, it was one college, one graduate program and then a decision to become his grandfather’s partner in the paint business. A move that had no doubt thrilled his parents, whom I still had not met, because they lived in Arizona.

  We began dating in January, and now it was May. We were taking things very, very slowly, partly because I have an eleven-year-old daughter, partly because he works absurdly long hours most days and weekends as well, as do I. If I were being honest, I’d been keeping things . . . slow . . . because it felt weird to have a real relationship with someone without telling him about the two sort-of-dead spirits inhabiting my guesthouse.

  He knows about the Senior Plus tours and the rumors around town. I’ve never exactly lied to him about the whole ghost thing, but I might have implied that it’s a marketing tool—largely by mentioning the value of a reputation for something different in the house as a business plan, whenever the subject came up.

  Dating is complicated when you have dead people in your house.

  He also knows I’m a private investigator and finds that part of my work fascinating, although this was the first case I’d taken on in a while.

  Josh had been good-natured about my seemingly glacial approach to dating and hadn’t pushed the matter. I hadn’t even been to his apartment, which I was told was on the third floor of a building in Asbury Park and had escaped storm damage. Many others were not as lucky.

  We were standing at the entrance to my former game room, looking at the white paneling and the numerous windows. The pool table, not yet discarded (I just didn’t have the heart, and Mom and Liss liked to play occasionally), was covered with a drop cloth from the painting process.

  Most of the guests—in fact, all of them except Cybill—were out scouting the town and finding themselves some dinner, in the restaurants I had recommended, I hoped. Cybill was up in her room; I knew because I had asked Maxie to keep an eye on her. That whole exorcist routine had gotten me nervous, so I hadn’t mentioned it to the ghosts, but I made it a point to know when Cybill was nearby. Just to be sure I didn’t act too “ghosty” with people who, to the naked eye, weren’t there.

  In fact, my father was hovering near the ceiling right now, tilting his head from side to side to get different perspectives on the room. I half expected him to hold up his hands as a frame, like the directors in old movies u
sed to do. Dad knew his way around a renovation, and he was weighing my options. But it was still weird to see him like this; I’d never known Paul and Maxie when they were alive, so watching them hover around like loose Mylar balloons wasn’t nearly as strange as seeing my dad behave that way. Even after a few months, I wasn’t comfortable with the sight.

  “You don’t want a bar,” he said mostly to himself. “It’s too big a room, and besides, you have no liquor license.” All of which was true.

  “It would be way too expensive to put in a bowling alley,” Dad said, and then waved a hand at his own thought. “A bowling alley,” he scoffed at himself.

  “That’s odd,” Josh said.

  Dad looked down at the sound of his voice. Had Josh sensed someone else was in the room? But Dad smiled; he liked Josh. He’d known him from Madison Paint since both Josh and I were in grade school. Our new arrangement was . . . somewhat different. Then again, maybe not that much.

  “What’s odd?” I asked.

  Josh looked at me funny. Not ha-ha funny. “That she doesn’t want a divorce, but she wants you to track down her husband and the girlfriend.” Oh, yeah.

  “Clients want things they want; it’s not my job to make moral judgments.” That was something Paul had told me once, and he had sounded roughly as unconvincing as I did saying it to Josh.

  “I’m not making a moral judgment,” he said. “I’m trying to figure out the motivation. He’s having an affair, yet she wants to stay married? Is their marriage really that competitive? That she’d want to have something to hang over his head just so she could control him?”

  “True loves takes many different forms,” my father said. Dad thinks of Josh as family and wants me to marry him. Dad is a million wonderful things, but subtle is not one of them. The fact that neither Josh nor I had come within driving distance of the subject was, apparently, irrelevant.

  “I won’t know until I start investigating,” I said. “If I have free time tomorrow, I’ll try to follow Dave Boffice on his lunch hour to see if there’s anything fishy.”

  “His lunch hour?” Josh asked.

  “Helen was very specific. Dave is a creature of habit, and she is convinced that he’s meeting Joyce Kinsler during his lunch hour. So I’ll get in the car and follow him.”

  “Ooh,” Josh said. “A stakeout.”

  “I hope not,” I said. “They’re really boring, and you have to make sure you don’t need a bathroom.” I read that in a detective novel once.

  “Next time you need to be on a stakeout, you should call me,” Josh suggested. “I could watch while you find a ladies’ room.”

  “Man, are you romantic,” I said.

  He snuggled up a little behind me and kissed my neck. “In my own way.”

  I’m not sure if it was weirder that my father was watching or that he seemed pleased. Either way, I was relieved when the doorbell rang. “Gotta go see who that is,” I said. “Probably one of the guests forgot their key.” I headed for the front door, despite Maxie’s hovering around the ceiling and Melissa’s (who has never missed a doorbell ring in her life) getting there ahead of me. Once I saw who it was, though, I wished I had stayed in the game room and let Dad watch Josh kiss my neck. Well, maybe not, but I wasn’t happy.

  Kerin Murphy was standing on my doorstep looking less perky than I’d ever seen her. Under normal circumstances, that wouldn’t have bothered me so much—Kerin could use a few less pounds of perky per square inch—but she appeared to have brought half the members of the Harbor Haven PTSO with her. They were all looking just as non-perky as Kerin, and all the anti-perk seemed to be directed at me.

  “Mrs. Murphy is here,” Melissa told me.

  “No kidding.” It was out before I could stop it.

  “Alison.” Apparently Kerin was showing off that she remembered my name. The posse behind her—honestly, they really looked like they should be carrying torches and pitchforks—just glowered.

  “Hello, Kerin,” I said as Josh walked in behind me. I saw Paul arrive from the basement, as well. Thank goodness, most of the guests were out; I was starting to feel crowded. “Can I help you ladies with something? Would you like to come in?”

  One of the women behind Kerin, whom I recognized as Anabel’s mom, looked positively petrified at the very thought. “I’m not going in,” she muttered. A couple of the others nodded in agreement.

  “What’s going on?” Josh said quietly in my right ear.

  “It’s the ghost-lady thing,” I groaned back. I took a deep breath and looked at the mob—which to be fair was only about six women—on my front porch. “I’ll come out there, then,” I said and stepped forward. I gave Liss a look indicating that she should stay inside, and she gave me one that indicated she would no doubt hear everything through the window anyway. Plus, Maxie, who was half in/half out of the house, could pass on the action like a play-by-play announcer.

  Paul came all the way out with me, as did Josh, who leaned against a porch post, one foot crossed in front of the other, looking casual. I was sure he’d help out if there was trouble, but by his appearance, you’d think he was completely unconcerned and probably not even listening.

  Kerin looked at Josh but didn’t ask who he was, and I didn’t volunteer. I knew girls like her in high school, and they were the ones who tended to steal the good boyfriends.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked her. The idea was to get the conversation started so it could be over sooner. It’s always best to see the silver lining.

  “Yes,” Kerin said. “Something is definitely wrong.”

  I waited, but she didn’t elaborate. I guessed that she had planned this conversation in advance, and I was stuck in the role of straight woman, so I supplied her with the appropriate setup, again in the service of getting Kerin and her posse off my porch before the guests started returning. “What’s the problem?” I asked.

  “You could have helped him, and you didn’t,” she said. “He asked you for help. I heard him.”

  I thought back over the day. I had seen Kerin outside the Stud Muffin with . . . “Everett?” I asked. “You mean when Everett said he had a ghost following him?” That didn’t seem logical, but it was all I could think of; there wasn’t anyone else who had asked me for help around Kerin Murphy recently. Unless she’d been following me around and hiding in the shadows. I wouldn’t put it past her.

  “Yes, of course, Everett,” said Anabel’s mom, who appeared to be serving in the capacity of Kerin’s sidekick in this particular melodrama. “You knew who she meant.” That sounded like an accusation, and the tone was starting to irritate me.

  “You want me to throw some mud at her?” Maxie asked. “It’s no trouble.” I shook my head in the negative. After a second.

  “Okay,” I said, trying to keep the edge off my voice. “I get it that Everett calls me the ghost lady. I know there are rumors around town about my house. I’ll take it from Everett because he has some problems. But I don’t think you ladies should listen to silly rumors. I’d like to think more of you than that.”

  Kerin took another step forward, and for a moment, I actually thought she was going to take a swing at me. But what she said was more devastating than a punch (especially from Kerin, whom I seriously thought I could take in a fair fight).

  “Everett is dead,” she said. “He was stabbed to death in the men’s room at the Fuel Pit gas station.”

  I staggered back a step or two, and for a second I thought Josh was going to have to catch me, but I steadied myself. Paul’s eyes widened—I wasn’t sure if it was in surprise or interest in the crime. I felt the breath push its way out of me, and had to remind myself to inhale.

  “That’s awful,” I said when I got my bearings again. “Poor Everett!”

  “Sure, now it’s ‘poor Everett,’” said one of the women in the back of the group, which was starting to look more like a mob again. “Where were you when he needed you?”

  “Me?”

  Josh took a step in my di
rection. The great protector was going to put himself in harm’s way in the face of a marauding band of . . . soccer moms? It was a nice gesture, anyway.

  “Maybe you need something stronger than mud,” Maxie said and ducked into the house before I could stop her.

  “Of course, you,” Kerin answered. “You were the only one who could have saved him.”

  “How do you figure that?” I asked. “I was nowhere near the men’s room at the Fuel Pit.” It occurred to me to say that I’d never been inside any men’s room, anywhere, but that wasn’t going to make me sound any more noble.

  “Neither was anyone else,” Kerin said, and I think she was hiding a little smile at my expense. “He was alone in there.”

  Maybe it was me, but I didn’t see how that made me culpable. “What has that got to do with Alison?” Josh asked. He’d clearly had enough of this kangaroo court.

  “I said, no one was in the men’s room except Everett,” Kerin said, her tone insinuating that Josh must clearly have an IQ similar to that of shredded wheat. “He didn’t stab himself.”

  “So?” I was glad Josh said it; I couldn’t figure the line of logic being pursued either.

  “So, it’s obvious to you, isn’t it? A ghost killed him, right?”

  Six

  That stunned pretty much everybody except Kerin and her posse. Paul’s brow knit to the point that I thought he might not be able to smooth it out without a hot iron. Josh let out something similar to a laugh. I felt my mouth drop open and quickly closed it again, trying desperately to think of the proper withering response, while all my brain could come up with was “Wha?”