The Skeleton Haunts a House (22 page)

“W
hat's wrong with it?”

“Seriously? First off, Alexis would never fall for something like that. If she were to get messages from a dead friend, she'd think one of her living friends was trolling on her.”

“From a dead person's account?”

“You got into it—somebody else could, too. Kendall might have written the password down somewhere, or given it to her sister, or forgotten to log out of her Facebook account on a public computer. All kinds of ways.”

“I guess.”

“And if Alexis saw somebody waving at her from outside her window at midnight, she'd call campus security. Do you want to have to run away from Oscar?”

“I could beat him, but it would be risky.”

“You said yourself that Alexis is a strategist. So she'd know a living person was behind this, but would have no reason to reveal her hand when the ‘ghost' hadn't shown a single card. If we don't have proof to threaten her with, we've got nothing.”

“You don't think her guilt would propel her to confess?”

“I don't know that she feels any guilt.”

Sid sat back down on my bed, and drummed his fingers across his jawbone. “Maybe I've been watching too many horror movies. My plan would totally have worked in
The Ring
or
It Follows
. Maybe you should be Sherlock after all.”

“Hey, who found the Devil's Divas? Who did the background check to show us that Alexis is the killer? The deerstalker is still yours.”

“I don't know. If the real Sherlock— And yes, I know there's no real Sherlock. But if there were a real one, and he'd been at the haunt, he'd have found a clue instead of messing around and asking the other customers for Scooby Snacks.”

“And the real Watson wouldn't have stayed outside. He'd have been there with you and spotted a fact you could use to make a brilliant deduction.”

“I just wish one of us had seen something,” Sid said.

“Me, too.” I paused. “What if you had seen something? What
could
you have seen that would point to Alexis?”

“But I didn't see anything.”

“I know. Just imagine for a minute. Come on, you've got the best imagination of anybody I know.” He'd imagined himself back to life, after all. “Imagine what would help us the most.”

He put his hands over his eye sockets so he could concentrate. “Not the murder itself—I would have said something right away. So maybe something leading to the murder . . . Alexis ducking behind the curtain to get the bat? No, she would have seen me, too, and wouldn't have done anything in front of a witness.”

“Probably not, and if she had, it would still beg the question of why you didn't come forward sooner.”

“What about Alexis popping back out from behind the curtain after the killing?”

“We don't know that she did that. She could have taken the back way to the next room.”

“Right.” He thought some more. “I've got it! The gloves! We know Alexis took the gloves with her because she used them to frame Linda. So she must have had them in her hand at some point. What if I'd seen her with the gloves?”

“And you didn't come forward until now because it was only a couple of days ago that the story about the gloves being found in Linda's dorm room made the news. So it took you until now to realize it was important.”

“Perfect! I mean, it would be if I'd actually seen her with the gloves.”

“You know you didn't, and I know you didn't, but Alexis doesn't.”

“And this helps us how?”

“Because now I've got a plan, or part of one. It's going to be a lot easier to carry out than yours, but we still get to haunt Alexis.”

T
hough I'd assured Sid that my new plan was simpler, it still took most of the day to gather the necessary equipment and recruit the help we needed. And of course, I had to teach my Thursday classes and deal with accompanying tasks. We got it all put together by the skin of our teeth, and at six o'clock, after Sid had checked Alexis's most recent Facebook postings to confirm that she was on campus, he sent her a message:

I saw you with the gloves.

Come meet me at Hamburger Haven by 7 tonight or I'm calling the cops at 7:15.

The name of the sender was Scooby-Doo@McQuaid, thanks to the account Sid had created that afternoon.

If Alexis had followed the story of Kendall's murder—and of course she would have—she'd know about the “stolen” Scooby-Doo suit. If that wouldn't lure her out, nothing would.

We'd purposely given her as little time as possible to respond so she couldn't come up with any kind of countermeasures. Mom and Phil were stationed near her dorm, and texted us to let us know when she left, and Deborah and Madison were hidden along the way to track her progress. With all the advance warning, we were in place long before Alexis came in.

I'd expected her to look scared, or maybe mean and determined, but she looked normal. She was the shortest of the Divas according to the pictures I'd seen, with bouncy blond hair, blue eyes, and dimples. Being cute somehow made her scarier.

She glanced around the room, which was about half filled with people eating burgers, but when she saw the stuffed Scooby-Doo perched on the end of the middle booth on the left wall, she went right over. “You sent me a message?” she said, and slid onto the empty side of the booth.

“That's right,” said a scruffy-looking individual in a NASCAR T-shirt and a ball cap that had seen better days.

“So who the hell are you?”

Brownie smirked. “Just call me Scooby.”

I'd wanted to play the part of Scooby myself, but had been overruled by Sid and my own common sense. I'd been teaching at McQuaid for over a year, and Alexis could have seen me around campus and might know about my associations with Deborah and Madison. Brownie, on the other hand, was a recent hire, and his current clothes and demeanor were nothing like the attractive adjunct I'd come to know and be fond of.

At least I'd be able to listen in on their conversation. I was in the corner of the restaurant, on the other side, and I had on reading glasses and a black beret—neither of which I usually wore. Madison had wanted to apply old-age makeup, too, but I decided I looked quite old enough with
the glasses. I had a book in front of me and earbuds that looked as if they were attached to my iPod, when in reality they were picking up the transmission from the gadget Deborah had taped under Brownie's shirt.

Sid was in the duffel bag under my table, also listening in. I'd expressed concern about his ability to use earbuds, since he has no ears, but Deborah had found earphones that worked via bone conduction. Which was good. I think he'd have walked to campus if I hadn't brought him along.

“What do you want?” Alexis said.

“Money. It seems to me that my seeing you with those bloody gloves might be worth a few bucks. You're a McQuaid, right? If your family can buy a university, you can afford to spare some cash.”

“My family doesn't own this lousy school. It's just named after us, okay? And what makes you think I know anything about those gloves?”

“Oh, sweetheart, that ship sailed as soon as you came rushing down here.”

There was a pause. “Tell me what you saw.”

Now Brownie could launch into the story we'd concocted. “I was working the duck pond at the carny the night your pal got snuffed, and when I was taking a break, I saw some old geezer toss his costume into his car and forget to lock up. So I thought I'd ‘borrow' it and have some fun. He'd left a ticket for the haunted house next to the costume, so I grabbed that, too. Then I saw you and your friends in line, and you better believe I noticed you. Four sweet blondes? Oh yeah.” The script said he was to leer next, and when I heard a slight sound of disgust from Alexis, I deduced that Brownie had done his duty.

He went on. “I wanted to be in your group, but they stuck me in the one after. I was thinking I'd see if I could join up
with you ladies, maybe save you from a monster or two and see how grateful you were.” Either his next leer wasn't as convincing, or she ignored it. “Problem was, a pair of rug rats attached themselves to me because of the costume. First chance I got, I dumped them and the costume and hotfooted it after you, so I was right behind you when you left the building. Too late to rescue you, but just in time to see.”

“See what?”

“Do I have to spell it out? The gloves.”

“What about them? I didn't have them that night.”

“Come again?”

She made a sound of pure exasperation. “I don't know who you are, but you don't know squat. If this is some sort of trick little Linda dreamed up to try to get off the hook for murdering Kendall, tell her she can forget it. And if you bother me again, I'll have you arrested and get my father to sue your whole freak show carnival.”

I didn't need to see Brownie to know he was as confused as I was. Alexis had come running in response to our message about the gloves, but was now saying “Scooby” couldn't have seen anything on the night of the murder. What did she mean about not getting the gloves until later? Had we picked the wrong Diva?

I had nothing else to use on her, and I knew she was going to leave in another second if I didn't do something. So I left my book and Sid behind, grabbed a chair to drag over to the booth where Brownie and Alexis were, and sat down at the end of their table.

“Mind if I join you?”

Alexis said, “You can sit with this loser if you want—I'm leaving.”

She started to slide out, but I blocked her. “Don't go yet. I want to talk to you about Kendall Fitzroy's murder.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I know you. You've got something to do with the haunted house.”

“What did you mean when you said you didn't get those gloves that night?”

“Who are you people? Is that guy wearing a wire?”

“Yes, and we're recording everything you say, including your admission that you had the gloves in your possession.”

“Fine,” she spat out. “I had the gloves, but not until Tuesday.”

“And you planted them in Linda's room the next day?”

“So what? It's not like they got an innocent person in trouble. Linda Zaharee is as guilty as sin.”

“Why are you so sure of that?”

“Hello? She was there! As soon as I realized she was working at McHades that night, I knew she had to have done it.”

“Why didn't you tell the police?”

She shrugged. “I couldn't prove anything.”

“It was so you wouldn't have tell people about her motive, wasn't it? You didn't want anybody to find out about the Devil's Divas.”

“I knew it!” she snarled. “I knew Kendall told Linda about us. She swore she was going to say she worked alone, but I never believed her. Just because she decided to go all twelve-steppy and confess everything she'd ever done. We were in high school when we messed with Linda. What difference does it make now?”

“Because you're still bullying people every chance you get.”

“So what? We have a little thing called freedom of speech in this country!”

“Harassment is not free speech, but never mind that. The fact is, you didn't want anybody to find out what you and your pals have been up to, and when Kendall told you she was
going to confess, you decided to get rid of her. And after all those years of playing softball, you knew just how to swing a bat.”

“Are you mental? I didn't kill Kendall. Linda did. She's the one who worked in that haunted house and could set it all up, not me.”

“You've gone through McHades every Halloween for years, so you knew all about the setup, and you had plenty of time to explore because you could get the key from your mother. You snuck in the Thursday before the murder, found the gloves and bat, and hid them where you could reach them. Afterward you broke into Linda's dorm room and planted the gloves to frame her.”

“Nobody saw me plant those gloves!”

“But you did plant them.”

“Prove it,” she said with a nasty smile.

“You mean like producing a witness who saw you in Linda's dorm? We could do that.” Well, we could if we actually knew of somebody who'd seen her, but I was hoping Alexis was mad enough not to see that I was bluffing. For once, it worked.

“Fine, I planted the gloves. That doesn't mean I killed Kendall.”

“Then how did you get them?”

“In the mail! That a-hole sent them to me, and I've still got the box and the note she wrote.”

“Excuse me?”

“A couple of days after Linda murdered Kendall, she mailed me the gloves with a note that said, ‘You're next.' I wasn't going to wait around and let that freak come after me. Not to mention the fact that Mom was going mental because my great-great-grandfather's will gave McQuaid Hall to somebody because the haunted house was closed. So I figured
I'd kill two birds with one stone. Linda would go to jail and the haunted house could open back up. I mean, it's not like Linda didn't do it.”

“Linda did not kill Kendall! She had no reason to because she didn't know Kendall bullied her in high school.” Part of the day's preparation had included Mom getting in touch with Linda's lawyer to pass along the question to Linda, and then get the response back. It was all third-hand, of course, but the lawyer was firmly convinced that Linda was telling the truth. She'd been flabbergasted to find out that Kendall was a bully. “Kendall may have intended to tell her when they met the next day, but she never got a chance.”

“Oh, sure, Linda says that now. Why would you believe her?”

“Why would I believe an Internet troll who just admitted to framing somebody for murder?”

She glared at me. “I am so going to get you fired.”

“You can try.”

“Just you watch me. And nobody is going to believe this insane story of yours, anyway. As for your little recording, I'm pre-law, which means I know your tape is inadmissible.”

“You are absolutely right—the recording is useless.” I waited just long enough for her to start to get nervous, then said something I'd been dying to say ever since Charles taught me the phrase. “Hey, rube.”

Soda Pop hopped out from the booth behind Brownie, Treasure Hunt and Dana stood up behind Alexis, and Charles and an out-of-uniform Oscar rose from the table behind me.

“Since I figured you'd deny everything you said, I thought it would be better to have witnesses along.”

“Some witnesses,” she sneered. “A lousy adjunct, a rent-a-cop, and I don't know who those other creeps are.” Then she caught a glimpse of the shirts Treasure Hunt, Dana, and
Soda Pop were wearing. “Are you serious? Carnies? As if anybody would believe carnies over a McQuaid.”

Treasure Hunt smiled wider than I'd ever seen him smile. “You think people will take a McQuaid's word over anybody else's?”

“That's how it works in this town, old man.”

“Glad to hear it. Now let me introduce myself. My name is Nelson Paul McQuaid the Third, but you can call me Great-Uncle Treasure Hunt.”