The Thrill of the Haunt (15 page)

“Oh, I’m sure we will,” Libby told me. “It’s beautiful.” Since I had worked fairly hard on that room when we moved in, I was proud to hear her say so. But Paul had business, so I wished Tom and Libby well and hightailed it for the game room, the closest private space for me to talk to invisible people.

“Okay, what’s up?” I get abrupt in such situations, particularly when I was less than thrilled with the day to begin with.

“There’s someone here I think you need to meet,” Paul told me.

Josh would be here in forty-five minutes. Mom and Melissa were putting some elaborate dinner surprise together in the kitchen, perhaps because of that. I had guests in the house, and a crazed local posse was displeased with me because it was taking me more than two days to find out who repeatedly stabbed the local homeless guy in a gas station bathroom. Another client would undoubtedly be upset that I wasn’t looking into who had hanged her husband’s mistress with an extension cord. And a loopy self-described exorcist wanted to rid my house of, among other people, my father.

“I’m not sure I need to meet more people right now,” I told Paul. “Where is this person, and how do I get out of the meeting? I’m guessing this is someone who’s . . .” I try not to use the word
dead
to describe people when Paul is around. He’s sensitive about no longer breathing.

“Yes, it’s someone like me,” he answered. “And he’s waiting in the basement. I think it’s important you meet with him.”

But before I could answer, I saw a transparent man, in his sixties if I were any judge, rise up through the floor into the game room. He was wearing a heavy wool peacoat and a knitted wool hat. Maxie changes her clothes about once a minute, and Paul will occasionally appear in something other than his traditional jeans and flannel shirt, but this guy had clearly died in winter and hadn’t given any thought to his attire since.

“Alison,” Paul said, “this is Matthew Kinsler.”

Uh-oh. “Mr. Kinsler?” I said.

“Yes,” the man said. “Joyce Kinsler was my daughter.”

“This just isn’t fair,” I said.

Matthew Kinsler looked at Paul for some sort of explanation. Paul didn’t answer him but turned his attention to me. “Mr. Kinsler wants to engage our services,” he said.

There weren’t many ways a dead man could have discovered a private investigator specializing in such cases. “You put out an ad on the Ghosternet again, didn’t you?” I accused Paul.

He held up his hands in front of him. “Nope,” he answered.

“I heard about you from someone I know,” Matthew explained. “There aren’t a lot of detectives who can see us.”

I felt my eyes narrow. “Who?” I asked.

“Who, what?”

“Who? What person, or spirit, that you know recommended me?” I crossed my arms. “How do I even know you
are
Joyce Kinsler’s father?”

Matthew cocked an eyebrow. “Her kitchen had exposed beams and no center island, and still had unpacked boxes from when she moved in two months ago. She drove a 2005 Toyota RAV4, until last Thursday, when she’d just bought a new Acura. And when she was eight years old, she got her finger stuck in a car window and we had to take her to the emergency room. She had a permanent crook in her left index finger. And she cried most of that night. Is there anything else you want to know?”

I leaned on one of the windowsills. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you any more than you’ve already been hurt.”

He shook his head. “I can understand your uncertainty. But I can tell you that Arlice Crosby recommended you. She speaks very highly of you.”

I wouldn’t have thought the service Arlice had received was much worth recommending. But she was a dear, generous woman. Paul smiled behind his hand; he’d told me word of mouth would build our business. His hand was transparent, so hiding the smile was less effective than he might have hoped. The fact that almost all our clients were dead and couldn’t pay was irrelevant. To him.

“How do you know Arlice?” I asked Matthew.

“I hang around a bit at Hanrahan’s, the tavern over on Ocean Avenue—spent a bit of time there when I was alive,” Matthew answered. “Arlice drops by now and again, and we have struck up the occasional conversation. When this happened to Joyce . . .” He trailed off.

“How did you find out where I live?” I asked. “How did you get here?” Maybe I could prove to him that he’d come to the wrong place, and he would go away and not ask me to look into Joyce’s death. That would be good.

“Arlice told me where you live. And you’re in the phone book,” Matthew answered, with a slight tone of
duh
.

That was it. I had to get unlisted from the phone book as soon as I had a spare moment to find out how you did that. Which would probably be sometime when I reached my mid-seventies. All I managed was, “Oh, yeah.”

“I wasn’t there when my daughter passed,” Matthew said without prompting. “I was just roaming around on the beach, watching the tide come in. And by the time I got back to her house, just to look in on her, she was already . . . in the body bag.” He bit his lip and then took on a determined look to keep from doing whatever ghosts do in place of tearing up.

The afterlife, I have discovered through trial and (mostly) error, is not an orderly place. Paul couldn’t contact Joyce and ask her how she died because people seem to take at least a few days to “reawaken” as ghosts, and some apparently skip this level of existence entirely and are never visible spirits; the rules are fluid at best. The afterlife seems to be run by the same people who brought you the Internal Revenue Service.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “I wish there were something I could do.” And halfway through the word
something
, I knew I’d made a monumental tactical error.

“There is,” Matthew said. “You can find out who killed my daughter. I can’t pay you, but I can figure out a way to get my ex-wife to write you a check, maybe do it myself. I’m very good at forging her signature. How much do you need?”

“Mr. Kinsler . . .”

“Matthew.”

I really didn’t want to get to know him, because that would make me feel even worse. But I said, “Matthew. I don’t need you writing checks on your ex-wife’s account for me. I’d end up in jail for forgery.”

“But I’d be the one doing the forging,” he protested.

“I doubt they’d try to lock you up.”

Matthew nodded. That was true.

I wanted to be careful and not point the finger at the Boffices. I’d never met Matthew before, and an angry ghost has a lot of resources at his disposal. “It’s not the point, anyway,” I continued. “I’m concerned that you think I can do something the police can’t do. I know the detective on the case in Eatontown, and he’s doing everything he can to find out what happened to your daughter. You don’t need me, Matthew, honestly. Let the police do their job.”

“I never trusted a cop in my life,” Matthew Kinsler said. “I’m not going to start now.”

“Detective Sprayne is very good,” I said, despite not knowing whether he was even competent at his job. “He’ll find out what you need to know, and if you follow him around, you’ll find out just as soon as he does.”

Matthew shook his head. “You’ll care. You’ll get some justice for my daughter,” he said. “You have a little girl. You know how it feels. Please, Ms. Kerby, don’t say you won’t help me. You may be the only detective in the world who can look me in the eye and tell me what I need to know. I have no place else to turn. You have to help me.”

I hate it when they’re persuasive. Especially the dead ones. Paul looked at me with puppy dog eyes, begging for the challenge. I felt like throwing him a liver treat.

“Okay,” I grumbled. “Tell me what you know.”

• • •

It turned out that Matthew didn’t know much about his daughter’s death, but he knew plenty about her life. “I didn’t stick around when that Boffice guy showed up. He’s been visiting Joyce since around the beginning of the year, first in her old place in Avon and now the new one in Eatontown,” he said. “I left whenever I saw him. There are things a father never wants to see, no matter what.”

He’d seen his daughter receive Dave at her home a number of times, he said, and didn’t like the look of the guy from the beginning. “He even wore his wedding ring,” he said. “Didn’t even try to pretend.”

Matthew also noted that Joyce was out of the house more often after Dave left. She had taken drives with Matthew in the car (of course, Joyce had no knowledge of her father’s presence), and he thought she’d actually driven to a house he came to believe was Dave and Helen Boffice’s home. She’d just sit there and watch the place, he said, much as I had watched Dave drive to his various lunchtime rendezvous. She’d never gotten out of the car to so much as ring the doorbell.

But as for the day Joyce died, Matthew had no knowledge of her comings and goings. His sojourn to the beach—something he did infrequently, he said—had kept him from his daughter’s last moments, and he actually choked up when he spoke of it.

“Maybe I could have done something,” he said. “Cut the cord down or something. If I’d been there . . .”

“There was no way you could have known,” I told him. “Just let me know if you hear from your daughter at all. If she becomes, you know . . . like you, she’ll have very good information to share.”

Paul nodded in approval and Matthew, looking determined, went on his way, although I had no idea as to where he’d go. Ghosts have a lot of time on their hands, and while some (like Paul) are tied to specific locations, many (like Maxie) have very little limitation in terms of territory. Matthew could literally be anywhere.

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.