The Skeleton Haunts a House (2 page)

“S
ay again?” Deborah's tone was determinedly matter-of-fact, but I could see how tightly she was gripping the walkie-talkie.

“There's a dead woman in the party room. A real one!”

“Who is it?” Deborah barked, and I knew she was thinking the same thing I was. My daughter, Madison, Deborah's niece, was in there. Sid was, too, but the voice had said “she.”

“I don't know. There's blood and . . . It's real blood!”

“Don't go anywhere, and don't touch anything! I'm coming!” She keyed a different switch. “Security. Lock the haunt down—nobody in or out. Do it now!” Another switch. “Bring up all house lights and shut off sound effects. Room monitors, hold all groups in place and stay where you are! Tell your actors to drop character.”

Then she pointed at her ticket agents. “You, call 911. Tell them to send cops and an ambulance. You, call campus security. I'm going in.”

She headed for the front door, and I was right on her heels.

“Where's Madison?” I asked.

“I'm not sure.” Back on the walkie-talkie, she said, “Room monitors sound off.” Deborah must have prepared them for an emergency because they started giving their names and statuses, including which scare actors were with them. Their voices were probably higher-pitched than usual, but they were holding it together.

Deborah led us in the front of the building, where a group of confused customers surrounded a young girl in a bride of Frankenstein costume. “Stay here!” Deborah ordered as we zoomed past, ignoring their questions.

There was a wide stairway in front of us, and though the glow-in-the-dark arrows painted on the floor pointed up, Deborah went past them to part a set of black curtains. The enclosure behind held control boards manned by college-aged kids in jeans and orange
McHades Hall Crew
T-shirts.

“What's going on?” one wanted to know.

“I'm going to find out. Stay here, stay safe.”

We went through another set of curtains at the back, and I found myself in a narrow corridor made up of plywood walls. Deborah went forward and slid open a door. Just as we went in, I heard a room monitor on the walkie-talkie say, “Avery. I've got Madison and her group with me.” I took a breath, wondering how long it had been since I'd done so.

The large room we'd entered was set up like a party, if you liked creepy parties. There was a banner hung on the wall that said
Delta Epsilon Alpha Delta Rush
in red, dripping paint. Along one side was a long table filled with nasty-looking refreshments like eyeballs in Jell-O, finger sandwiches with human fingers shoved into them, and a head with brains hanging out. A bar had poison bottles, bloody Bloody Mary glasses, worms in the martinis, and maggots in the beer.
All fake, of course, but as gross as it was in normal light, I could only imagine how it would have looked if the scene had been set for customers.

In one corner of the room, half a dozen people in zombie costumes were huddled together. When they saw Deborah, they pointed to the opposite corner, where a woman was crumpled on the floor, lying on one side with one arm flung forward and wide-open eyes staring at nothing. And as the guy on the walkie-talkie had said, there was blood.

When I got nearer, I realized that she looked closer to girl than woman. I couldn't bring myself to look too long at her face, but her hands looked young. Her long blond hair didn't hide the fact that she'd been beaten hard enough that her skull was no longer shaped right and one arm was bent at the wrong place. She wasn't in costume, unless it was some character who wore blue jeans, white sneakers, and a dark blue hoodie.

Deborah knelt beside her and touched her arm. Then she checked for a pulse, something I hadn't realized she knew how to do. After a moment, she shook her head, took a deep breath, and stood. “Okay, the police are going to be here soon. Does anybody know who this is?”

There was a round of
no
s.

“Who found her?” Before anybody could answer, she said, “Never mind, we'll wait for the cops.” She got back on her walkie-talkie to tell security to bring the police to the zombie party when they arrived. “Otherwise,” she said, “nobody comes in, nobody goes out.”

I whispered, “What about Sid?”

“There's nothing I can do about him, Georgia. We've got to preserve the crime scene.”

She was right, I knew she was right, but the thought of what was going to happen when the police made my skeletal friend take off his costume scared me more than anything in the haunt could have.

W
e didn't have to wait long. It couldn't have been more than ten minutes when a guy in a bright orange
McHades Hall Security
T-shirt came in, followed by a pair of Pennycross patrolmen and a man in jeans and a button-down shirt.

When Deborah saw the fellow in jeans, she nodded a curt greeting. It was Louis Raymond, a member of the Pennycross Police Department. At one point, I'd been sure Louis was interested in dating her, but when Madison had been kidnapped some months earlier, he hadn't taken Deborah's instructions on how to respond, and she hadn't been pleased.

“We got a report of a woman being hurt,” he said.

“She's over there. Dead.”

He repeated Deborah's actions, then asked, “What happened?”

A college-aged guy spoke first. At least I thought he was college-aged. It was hard to tell under his makeup, which made him look as if his throat had been slit and putrefaction had set
in. “We don't know! We were in the middle of attacking the group— I mean, not really attacking, but doing our scene, so we were chasing people all around. One woman went into that corner, tripped or something, and started yelling that it was a real body. We just laughed—you know, still in character—and she ran out screaming. But once she was gone I started thinking that there aren't any bodies in this scene, just us zombies. So I went to see what she was talking about and I found—” He swallowed. “I found her. I thought somebody had just moved a prop in here, but when I touched her, I could tell she was real. That's when we called Ms. Thackery.”

“Do you know how long she'd been there?” Louis said.

The zombies conferred, but it turned out that they weren't sure. “That corner is really dark when the room is set, so we didn't notice her until that other woman tripped over her.”

“I did a walk-through before opening tonight,” Deborah put in, “and I'm sure she wasn't here then.”

“How long have you been open?” Louis asked.

“Since five. So two and a half hours.”

“She's not one of your people, is she?”

Deborah shook her head. “All of our people are accounted for.”

“Then what about the group she came through the house with? Wouldn't they have noticed her disappearing?”

“Not necessarily,” said a girl zombie with a fake eye hanging down one cheek. “A lot of parties get split up in the haunt, especially in this scene. They get so scared that guys forget their girlfriends and parents abandon their kids. It happens all the time.”

I wasn't sure if I should be impressed or appalled by the effectiveness of their efforts.

“Have you checked security footage?” Louis asked.

“We don't have any cameras,” Deborah said, and I could tell she was gritting her teeth.

He looked as if he was about to ask why when more responders started coming in: EMTs with a stretcher, additional uniformed officers, people in plainclothes with badges on their belts, and several campus security guards.

Louis waved one of the officers over. “Officer Burcell is going to take you out of the way and stay with you, okay?”

“What about the rest of the people in the haunt?” Deborah asked. “I've got cast and crew members, and I don't know how many customers are still in the building.”

“We'll get to them as soon as we can,” Louis said, “but it's going to take some time. Just hang tight.”

Deborah got on her walkie-talkie and told her people that the police were on the scene, and that they should all stay exactly where they were until the police told them differently. There was some back and forth with the security crew outside the exit because apparently some people had escaped despite their best efforts to keep them contained, and some of the ones left were making noises about leaving. Louis sent a couple of officers out to deal with the situation. Then Officer Burcell herded Deborah, the zombies, and me to the end of the room as far as possible from the dead girl. Being at a distance was fine with me—farther away would have been better.

Deborah was glaring at Louis as he went to work, but I knew she wasn't really mad at him. She just gets argumentative when she's worried, and she was currently pretty worried. She was in charge of McHades, after all. Had she and I had a different kind of relationship, I'd have mirrored the scare actors we were standing with and offered her a hug or a hand to hold. But it was us, so I said, “You okay?”

She grunted in an affirmative way.

The niceties attended to, I said, “I guess Officer Raymond was off duty when the call came in since he's not wearing a uniform.”

“He rotated to Investigations, so he gets to wear plainclothes. Promoted to sergeant, too. Or so I hear.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“What? We do still bowl on the same team. I have to talk to him sometimes.”

In a better situation, I'd have probed more about just how much she had to talk to him, but it wasn't the time or place for sibling teasing. I think my unconscious was trying desperately to give me something to think about other than the dead body just a few feet away. At least the gathering responders meant I couldn't actually see her anymore. When I tried to think of something else, I started worrying about Sid instead. I wanted to borrow Deborah's walkie-talkie to call Madison and see if she knew where he was, but was afraid to draw any attention to him.

After some discussion between the various responders, Louis came over. “We're going to evacuate all of you people, plus the rest of the staff and customers so we can move the investigation along. McQuaid security has opened up a room in Stuart Hall, which I understand is close by, and we're going to walk you over there and ask everybody some questions.”

“You want me to let my people know?” Deborah asked.

“If you wouldn't mind.”

She nodded and used the walkie-talkie to spread the word. There was some grumbling, not so much from the cast as from customers who wanted to know what was going on, but Deborah just said, “Don't fuss at me. The cops want us elsewhere so we're going elsewhere.”

“Thanks,” Louis said when she was done.

“I don't blame them for wanting to leave,” she retorted. “None of the customers upstairs or in the room before this one would have had a chance to kill that girl. It's the people who've already left you should be holding.”

He held his temper admirably, and only said, “It shouldn't
take long to sort out the people who don't know anything, and we'll be trying to track down the people who left.” Then he waved over another uniformed cop and a pair of McQuaid security guards and said, “These people will walk you over.”

“Can we get our stuff out of the greenroom?” a zombie cheerleader asked.

“Not now,” Louis said. “We're going to need to leave everything in situ until the forensics people get here.”

“But I need to call my mom and let her know I'm okay,” she said.

“You can use my phone,” I said. “I didn't come in until after the body was found, so I don't need to leave my bag, right, Louis?”

“No, you're good, but as for calling . . . Look, I don't want to alarm the town with a bunch of rumors. So I'm going to ask you people not to make any phone calls, or e-mail anybody, or tweet for the time being. Once we identify the victim and get in touch with her next of kin, we'll give the okay.”

The zombies and I nodded, and Deborah said, “Don't worry. They can wait.”

Our escorts started leading the way out, two in front and two behind. I guess they didn't want anybody sneaking off. We went back the way Deborah and I had come, through the building to the main entrance, collecting staff and customers as we went. I spotted Madison, still in her vampire outfit, but didn't see Sid's Scooby-Doo head anywhere. I wasn't sure if that was a good sign or a bad one.

Once we were outside, the cops cleared a path through the curious crowd and took us to Stuart Hall, the sedate, ivy-covered building which held the plush dining room usually only used for university functions and suck-up-to-alumni dinners. The zombies and other made-up cast members looked particularly incongruous amongst the oak tables and solemn paintings of former deans and distinguished professors. A trio
of maintenance people was busily setting up metal folding chairs all through the room, no doubt wanting to keep the fake blood and gore off of the upholstery.

People quickly divided up. Customers went to one side, grumbling and looking suspiciously at the scare actors. The actors were on the other side, comforting one another and chattering in a mix of excitement and upset. Deborah and I were left in the middle.

Madison found us quickly, and came over for hugs—in public—which showed how upset she was.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I'm fine,” she said. “Did somebody really die?”

“I'm afraid so. And it looks like murder.”

“Oh my gosh. Was it one of us?”

Deborah said, “Nope, a customer. I didn't recognize her.”

“That's a relief,” she said, then quickly added, “Not that it's good. I know I shouldn't care that it was somebody I didn't know but—”

“We get it,” I said, and hugged her again. “I don't see Si— I don't see Scooby-Doo.”

“I don't know where he is,” Madison said. “He was with my group, but he slipped away when the lockdown was called.”

“He couldn't have left the haunt,” Deborah said. “Security said some people got through, but not a Scooby-Doo.”

Madison said, “Then I guess he's still in there. What do we do if they find him?”

“Maybe they won't connect him with us,” I said.

Madison gave me a look. “Mom, what are you wearing? Or should I say
Velma
?”

“Oh, coccyx, I forgot!” It wouldn't take a deductive genius to pair up my costume with Sid's.

“Besides which,” Deborah reminded me, “my ticket takers saw you together. Didn't you notice them taking pictures? They thought you were cute.”

“Next time, no matching costumes.”

“If there is a next time,” Deborah said ominously.

That pretty much killed conversation for a while, so we sat down to wait. Maybe fifteen minutes later, a man in a McQuaid sweatshirt and jeans came in, looking frazzled. He started for the clump of cops, but when Deborah called out, “Hey, Oscar,” he swerved in our direction.

“You picked a swell night to take off,” she said to him.

“I know. I should have known better on the first night of the Howl, but I wasn't expecting things to go crazy until closer to Halloween.”

“Oscar, you've met my niece, Madison. This is my sister, Georgia.”

“Oscar O'Leary,” he said, shaking my hand. “You teach English, right?”

“Does it show?”

He grinned. “I don't know all the faculty, but having three professors with the same last name stands out.”

“Oscar is McQuaid's chief of security,” Deborah explained. “He's been helping me set up safety protocols at the haunt, not that they worked any too well tonight.”

“Hey, we were planning for drunks and accidents, not murders.” He patted her arm, and she actually let him. Madison and I exchanged quizzical glances. Oscar had sandy blond hair and dark brown eyes, and while I wouldn't call him handsome, he was definitely in the “nice-looking” category. I'd probably seen him around campus, but fortunately, hadn't had to deal with security in a while.

Deborah said, “So what's going on up at the haunt? Have they identified the girl yet?”

“Yeah, they found a purse dropped behind the curtains, and the picture on the driver's license matches the victim. Sergeant Raymond is calling her family. Man, that's not a job I'd want.”

I took Madison's hand in mine and squeezed it. I didn't even want to think about getting a phone call like that.

“Anyway, Raymond is going to come take charge here when he's done, but in the meantime, I'm going to see about getting you people some drinks, maybe something to eat.” He patted Deborah's arm again before walking on.

“He seems nice,” I ventured.

“He knows his job,” she said, which was high praise.

He certainly knew how to get things moving. Within minutes, the dining room personnel had rustled up coffee, soda, and cookies for everybody. I wondered which one of the dean's affairs would be short on refreshments as a result. Since I was never invited to such things, I took extra cookies.

Finally Louis showed up, and accompanying him were a trio of young women. All three looked as if they were a year or two older than Madison, with blond hair, and had such reddened eyes that I could tell they'd been crying. I assumed that they were friends of the murder victim, and I wished I could offer them a hug or some comfort. Madison looked at them as if she were thinking.

“Do you know them?” I asked.

“I'm not sure. They look kind of familiar.”

Louis took a position near the front of the room, “May I have your attention please?” He waited for people to quiet down. “I want to thank you for your patience. I know this isn't the way you intended to spend your Friday night, but as you've probably heard, a young woman was killed at McQuaid Hall. We've identified her as Kendall Fitzroy. She lived here in Pennycross and attended Brandeis in Waltham.”

There were gasps and murmurs from some of the scare actors, which I interpreted as recognition.

Louis went on. “We're going to speak with each of you to find out if you saw anything that can help us determine what
happened. So if you can be patient just a little while longer, we'll get the process started.”

As the cops organized themselves, one of the uniformed officers came over and said, “Miss Thackery?”

“Which one?” Deborah asked.

He looked confused, but said, “Sergeant Raymond said it's okay to let people make phone calls.”