The Thrill of the Haunt (24 page)

It took a little doing, but after I’d seen to the guests and
the morning spook show (including a ghost duet on guitar and frying pan), I convinced Maxie to meet Everett on the roof of the men’s room structure at the Fuel Pit. (She hadn’t been able to hack into Helen Boffice’s bank accounts yet and was pessimistic about her chances after working on it all night—in short, she needed the break.) I had Marv fill up my Volvo while we were there, to give him a plausible excuse for my being at the station—New Jersey and Oregon are the only states where it’s illegal to pump your own gas—and he lobbied to fix the latch on my wagon, but I demurred since I couldn’t afford to leave the car there for the rest of the day. I had places to go.

While he was filling the car, a question occurred to me.

“Marv,” I asked, “where’s the trap for your sewer line?”

Marv, who probably had not been expecting that question, thought for a moment. “Around back,” he said. “Behind the trees. Why?”

I ignored the question. “Have you had any backups lately? Since Everett died?”

“Funny you ask that, Alison. We had a sewer backup about three days later.” Marv squinted at me as if I were a bright midday sun. “What are you getting at?”

I did some quick calculations. “What happened with the sewer?”

“I had Mickey Cochrane come up and clean it out,” he said. “It wasn’t too bad, and it didn’t back up into the restrooms, so we didn’t have to shut down or anything. Alison—”

“Mickey didn’t find anything special blocking the line?”

Marv shook his head. “He said it was just the usual buildup. Why?”

“I think Mickey might’ve missed something, Marv,” I told him. “I’d get Mickey to come out before you get another backup and clean out the trap.”

“What do you think he’s going to find there?” Marv asked.

I didn’t want to plant ideas in his mind. “Just have him do it, and if he finds something special, you have him call Lieutenant McElone before he does anything else, okay?”

Marv was clearly baffled but agreed, and was indeed on the phone to the local sewer expert and rooter before I headed back to the scene of the ghost training.

Maxie was quite happy with her assignment by the time I left. Not having to go into the restroom itself, coupled with her first clear view of Everett cleaned up and in uniform, combined to warm her to the job, and she was trying her best to explain outside movement (“You just have to
think
your way outside”) to him when I announced I was leaving and got no response from either ghost. I was no longer relevant in this setting.

My first stop, then, was to see Detective Lieutenant Anita McElone.

“It’s too early in the day on a Sunday to see you,” she said, reiterating remarks she’d made when I’d called to ask if she’d be in. “I was going to go to church, so this had better be really good because God doesn’t like it when I blow him off for silly stuff.”

“Well, hopefully you won’t have to make any excuses,” I answered. “How about this: Dave Boffice is really Everett Sandheim’s dead son, Randy.”

Now you would think that such news would elicit a reaction from an investigating detective. You’d be wrong. McElone just looked at me. “And how do you know this?” she asked.

“I have an excellent source,” I said, which was true. Everett should know what his own son sounded like.

“Is it the kind of source I could bring into court and have testify in front of a judge?” McElone said, and I got the impression she knew what my answer would be.

“Um . . . no.” I wasn’t even sure Everett could get out of the Fuel Pit men’s room, and even if he could make it to court, the odds were slim that the judge, the jury, the prosecutor, the defense attorney or pretty much anyone else in the courtroom would be able to see or hear him.

McElone’s voice dropped half an octave in resigned disappointment. “You gonna tell me you heard this from a ghost?” she asked.

She’d opened the door, so I walked through. “Everett,” I said, nodding.

“Oh, good,” McElone answered. “So he can tell you who killed him, too.”

“He, um, doesn’t remember,” I was forced to say.

“Convenient.” McElone sat down at her desk and started hitting computer keys. “Might as well check on the possibility, anyway.” She took a pair of half-glasses from her top desk drawer without looking and put them on to better assess the screen. It made her look like a very burly librarian. “The dates are close enough,” she said. “Randy was reported missing, but no body was ever found. His Harley was found at Sea Haven by Officer Daniel Boyle just over seven years ago, in a ravine off a higher elevation of Route 36.”

“Could he have just walked away?” I asked.

“It’s possible, but an injured guy walking down the main street of a beach resort would probably draw a little attention.” She clacked a few more keys. “Still, the first records of David Boffice seem to appear less than three months later, when he showed up in bank records opening an account in cash and showing what could have been a fake driver’s license as ID.”

“Then so far Everett’s story bears out,” I said to myself.

McElone gave me a sour look. “Yeah. The dead guy only you can see has real credibility here. I should be run out of the police department just for listening to this stuff.”

“And yet, here you are.” I told her about the gathering I was organizing for the guesthouse tonight because it seemed the thing to do, though it only served to annoy McElone.

“You’re bringing in some suspects on a murder that I’m investigating just on your own authority?” McElone snarled. “Were you planning to tell the local police about this little shindig of yours?”

“I’m telling you now,” I pointed out. “I didn’t think you’d want to come over, since my house scares you.”

McElone looked around to see if anyone had heard me say that; luckily for her the Sunday morning crowd at the Harbor Haven Police Department was sparse, and no one was nearby. “Keep your voice down, okay?” she scolded. “I’m a professional. If my job brings me to a place that . . . isn’t my favorite, I’ll cope with it. Now, what time is this goofy party of yours supposed to start?”

I gave her the details and headed to my car. With the police presence in place, it was time for me to beef up the list of witnesses and suspects.

Next up was driving to Brenda Leskanik’s house. She’d agreed to see me today only because I hadn’t let her off the phone until she would; Brenda was too straight a shooter to hang up on the woman investigating a murder, even if it was of the man who had abandoned her and their young son.

“I don’t see the point,” she was saying now, bringing me an iced coffee from her kitchen and setting it down in the cup holder of the massive recliner she’d directed me to in her living room. “I’ve done all I can to put that life behind me. Randy’s gone, and Everett’s gone now, too. What’s to be gained?”

I couldn’t tell her that Everett was now officially haunting a gas station bathroom or that Randy was possibly not as dead as she might have thought. But I could say, “You can gain a sense of justice. Maybe you can gain some peace. This bothers you enough that you want to stay away; doesn’t that tell you something in and of itself?”

The iced coffee was really good, and after the morning I had experienced so far, the caffeine was more than welcome. Brenda looked skeptical, which is to say that she looked like most New Jerseyans, and said, “I don’t know about that, Alison. Pain is a warning system. If something hurts, you’re meant to stay away from it.”

“The way you didn’t mention Randy had been involved in something criminal, because that was too painful?” Paul had suggested I throw that out. He didn’t know, but he believed that one motive for changing your identity is that authorities are after you.

Brenda evaded my gaze. “How did you know about that?” she asked. You could always count on Paul.

“It just made sense.”

“He was dealing drugs and might have been high when he went off the road,” Brenda said, still not looking at me. “There were warrants out for his arrest.”

Things were starting to fall into place. I needed Brenda there tonight. “You’re in a lot of pain, Brenda,” I said truthfully. “Face it. Deal with it. Make it go away.”

“I have been dealing with it,” she argued. “It’s better not to confront it. You don’t pick at a scab; you let it cover over and get tough. You don’t go after it.”

“Unless going toward it can help ease the pain,” I countered. I’d been rehearsing since we’d agreed I could come and talk to her, so I’d had that one more or less ready.

“There’s no guarantee it will,” Brenda said, sitting down across from me in an armchair with slightly worn material on the armrests. “What can I do that could help?”

“You can point out anyone you recognize,” I answered, feeling guilty that I wasn’t cushioning her for the shock I assumed was coming to her. “You can be there to tell me if I’m going wrong. I didn’t know Everett before he had his difficulties; you did. That’s very valuable to me.”

Brenda’s mouth twitched. I decided to press a little. “If you had sustained a wound in the service, but you had to go back to get someone who had been left behind, would you decide the pain was too strong, or would you ignore it and help a fallen soldier?”

She looked almost angry, her nose crinkling a bit, and for a moment I thought she was going to take a swing at me. “You hit a nerve,” she said.

“I really need you there,” I told her, “and I’ve found that being nice isn’t always the most effective tactic.”

“I noticed that.” Brenda shifted in her chair and took a sip of iced coffee that she probably didn’t even want just to buy herself a moment. I gave her another by taking a sip of mine, which I definitely wanted. “Okay, I’ll be there tonight,” she said. “But I’m not making any promises.”

“Neither am I,” I answered.

• • •

It was an impulse to visit Margaret O’Toole, Helen Boffice’s mother, but I had my reasons. Really. It was possible she could shed some light on the history of Helen’s first marriage and her subsequent fortune, which she appeared to not be spending. Also, she might have some insight into Helen and Dave’s sincerely odd marriage and its resemblance to a really high-spirited poker game between two ultra-competitive riverboat gamblers.

But mostly, it was because my daughter had suggested it, and that girl is always a couple of blocks ahead of me. When she grows up, the world had best watch out for her.

The problem was, when I arrived at Margaret’s house, she wasn’t there. The workmen were still working on the back of her roof, and after a few moments of waiting by the front door, I walked around back and approached one who was picking up unused shingles and piling them for removal.

He looked at me questioningly for a moment, then asked if he could help me. I said he could, if he knew where Margaret O’Toole might be.

“Who’s Margaret O’Toole?” he asked.

“The woman who owns this house,” I said after a moment. “Your customer.”

“Oh, we’ve never seen her,” he said. “She hasn’t been back here since the storm. Went to stay with her sister in Ohio or somewhere. I don’t know if she’ll come back after we fix the house up, or if she’ll just try to sell it.” He shook his head. “Good luck with that.”

“But I saw her here a few days ago,” I protested. “She must be overseeing the work, no?”

“Oh no,” the guy answered. “Her daughter was here for a while, but she hasn’t been around for a couple of days.”

An alarm went off in my head, but I didn’t know why. “Her daughter?” This question-on-question thing could be useful in more than social situations.

“Yeah. Helen. She’s paying for the work, I’m pretty sure. You want me to check?”

Yes. I wanted him to check.

While he did, I took a look inside the house through the glass doors on the rear deck. I didn’t go inside, but it was clear from where I was standing that the place was overcrowded with furniture. There were too many chairs in the living room and extra seats in the dining room that didn’t match the table or breakfront. It was like a furniture warehouse had sent its excess to Margaret O’Toole’s house.

And on one wall in the living room, not nestled in a corner where you’d expect, was a very large antique grandfather clock.

I couldn’t prove it, but it sure seemed like Helen Boffice had moved a lot of her possessions into her mother’s house.

Just what I needed. More unanswered questions.

“Helen’s first husband Bryan Darnell died five years ago in
March,” Maxie reported. I’d picked her up at the Fuel Pit—she reported that Everett was “making some progress” but could not yet move freely outside the men’s room structure—and brought her back to the guesthouse with new marching orders to research on my decrepit MacBook. “He was running in the park and keeled over. Fifty-eight years old.” I cut her off before she could say how old she thought that was.

“Was there a medical examiner’s report?” Paul, his feet sunk into the game-room floor, wasn’t stroking his goatee, but I was willing to bet he wanted to.

Maxie nodded. “Yeah, because he died in a public place. The doctors found evidence of buildup in three arteries. He must have eaten like a lion.”

“So we can assume that Bryan was not murdered,” Paul said. “What did he do for a living?”

Maxie scrolled through whatever information she had accessed. “Owned a small pharmaceutical company, do you believe it? Sold it to a much bigger one a year before he died. That’s where Helen’s inheritance came from.”

“I don’t understand,” Melissa said. She was sitting on a barstool next to the covered pool table, eating a salad she’d made herself (per her grandmother’s carefully written instructions) for lunch. “If Mrs. Boffice’s mother isn’t in the house, who did you see with Mr. Boffice at lunch?”

“That is an excellent question,” I told her. Then, as I often do when I’m asked an excellent question, I looked at Paul for the answer. Because I didn’t have a clue.

“I think there’s a very good chance it was
Helen
Boffice,” he said. “If you’re right that Helen had moved out of the house with Dave and was staying in her mother’s house, I think that’s an indication that we are very close to solving this case.”

Melissa and I both stared at him and said in unison: “We
are
?”

“Yes. You’ve gotten some very good information, and the pieces are beginning to fall into place.” Paul paced a little. It’s weird to see when you don’t have a view of his feet; he sort of looks like one of those tin figures that used to be in the shooting galleries at the Seaside Heights boardwalk, moving back and forth with no visible propulsion.

“Okay,” I said. “How?”

He stopped moving and looked at me. “I don’t know yet,” he said. “But it’ll come together soon, I’m sure.”

That was helpful.

“How could that be Helen?” I asked him. “I’ve
seen
Helen. That woman had gray hair and was taller and older than Helen. In short, that wasn’t Helen.”

“Maybe,” Paul said. There’s no point in talking to him when he gets like that.

But, of course, I was going to try. “What can I say at the thing tonight?” I asked him. “All I’ve got is more questions.”

“This was your idea,” Maxie said. “Wing it.” You can always count on Maxie.
I
can’t, but you can.

I ignored her and looked at Paul, who looked back. “What?” he said.

“I’m asking what I have to go with tonight,” I repeated. “I’ve built up everyone’s expectations, I’ve got all these people showing up, now I have to deliver. What should I say?”

“I have to go with Maxie on this,” Paul answered. “I didn’t advise you to set this evening up to be the revelation; I would have been much more comfortable just continuing the investigation.”

“So you’re telling me it’s my fault?” That couldn’t be what he was saying.

“Essentially, yes. That’s what I’m saying,” Paul answered.

“Paul . . .”

Melissa looked over at me; sometimes I can tell when she’s trying me on for a role model. She didn’t know how she would handle this situation, so she wanted to see what I would do. So I managed not to scream, which I considered a true victory.

“We’ll help you as much as we can,” Paul said. “It can’t hurt to have all the suspects in the room at the same time. And we’ll follow through on your plan to startle them into talking. Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

“So I have essentially no options left,” I said, thinking aloud.

“That’s about the size of it,” Paul said. “But I think you should ask Joyce’s friend Katrina Holm to e-mail you any photos she might have of the two of them together.”

• • •

Katrina had not been home when I called, but I’d left her a voice mail and hoped she’d get back to me before the evening’s festivities would begin. That hope was starting to wane when Josh arrived. He was there early because he knew I wanted to talk, and everyone—even Maxie!—backed off to offer us some privacy. And I was desperately trying to formulate words that would inform without repelling. Was that so much to ask?

“Okay, you’ve lured me out here. What’s the big secret?”

Josh looked at me with a combination of amusement and what I chose to see as impatience but was probably worry. He’d come by after dinner, which had been pizza that night because Mom wasn’t cooking. In a few minutes, Cybill’s ceremony—which she’d been preparing since the moment it had been mentioned—would begin, and there was no telling what deep insanity would ensue. I’d insisted she give me a full description of the spell she thought she was going to cast to protect my house, but she’d been unfocused about it, saying that it would “seal the premises from the advances of evil spirits, goblins, the undead, those who would cause mischief and those who would damage the aura of the family within.”

“Yeah, but what are you going to
do
?” I’d asked.

“I will be peaceful,” she had said, as if that answered anything.

I looked at Josh. “It’s not a big secret,” I said. “Okay, maybe it is a big secret, but it’s not something I especially wanted to keep from you. I wanted you to know, but I was afraid it would scare you off, that you’d think you shouldn’t have to deal with a woman as clearly unhinged and disturbed as I am.”

“You’re procrastinating,” he said. We were watching the ocean from the hill in my backyard. The sand comes up closer to the house now, reminding us of the storm, but the dune closest to us had probably prevented flooding and kept my guesthouse in business. Josh put his forearms on my shoulders.

“I’m explaining,” I insisted, trying to get lost in his eyes but remembering that I still had to open up my particular can of crazy and let it spill out all over him. “I don’t want you to think that it was reluctance on my part.”

“Alison,” Josh said, “I’ve known you since the fourth grade. Granted, there was a twenty-year gap when we never saw each other, but there’s very little you can say that will make me think you’re any crazier than the girl who used to come into the paint store and mix up the cans on the shelves because you thought people would buy blue when they wanted gray and get a lovely surprise.”

“It was a good plan,” I said, extending my lower lip.

“Assuming no one could read the labels,” he agreed. “Now. Stop stalling. Let’s hear it before your in-home reenactment of
The Exorcist
, which I really don’t want to miss. Right now, no more explanation about your motives. What do you need to tell me?”

And I just couldn’t do it.

I wanted to; I tried to. The words
There are two ghosts in my house, and they’re real
were right there in my frontal lobe. I just couldn’t force them out of my mouth. “I’m not sure I want to have any more children,” I said. Technically, it was true; I hadn’t given any thought at all to the idea of having another baby, especially since Josh and I weren’t within driving distance of that conversation. But it seemed like the kind of thing I might be holding back in order to avoid driving him away. Sort of.

“I really don’t think that’s what this is about.”

Damn. He actually knew me well; this was the price one pays. My mind, racing, didn’t clear the words before they exited through my mouth: “Um . . . I’m still stuck on what to do with the game room?”

Josh let out a long breath. “And I so wanted to see that exorcism,” he said.

“What does that mean?” But I knew what it meant. And I wasn’t happy about it.

“It means, call me when you really want to have this talk,” Josh answered, removing his arms from my shoulders and turning back toward the driveway, where his car was waiting. “I’ll be happy to hear from you then.”

I called his name a few times, but he kept on walking.

• • •

“The ceremony is about to begin,” Cybill said, and she swirled into the game room looking solemn and ecstatic at the same time.

There was quite a crowd assembled to watch: Tom and Libby Hill had come down first, expressing a desire to get “good seats,” and they had indeed taken two of the chairs I’d put out and situated themselves almost in the exact center of the room.

Harry and Beth Rosen had arrived home from dinner just after Jeannie and Tony had shown up with Oliver, who looked embarrassed in the sailor suit Jeannie had put him in, and with good reason. Jeannie grinned at me, secure in her belief that I was Mistress in the Art of Deceiving Guests into believing my house was haunted, and stayed at the back of the room, playing with Oliver near one of the bookcases.

At some point, Marv Winderbrook arrived and went over to the side of the room, by the windows, looking confused. I could empathize.

Melissa, Mom, Paul and Maxie had all entered at once from the kitchen, although the rest of the assemblage could see only Liss and Mom. I looked around for Dad, whom I had told to be in the house on the extremely unlikely chance that Cybill could actually do what she’d said she could, but he was nowhere to be seen. I’d have to sidle over to Mom at some point and find out if he actually was on the premises. If not, I’d feel compelled to shut Cybill down, and I had no cover excuse to use for that purpose.

Maxie had reported it was unlikely Everett would be able to achieve mobility soon enough to get here, and while Paul had tried to summon Matthew Kinsler, he had not yet received an answer. I wasn’t sure whether he could leave a ghost voice-mail message.

Lieutenant McElone had indeed arrived, dressed in plainclothes (as she usually was on the job anyway) and in her personal car to divert suspicion. But she stayed out on the porch, apparently operating under the mistaken assumption that the ghosts couldn’t go outside. She looked nervous enough to take up smoking but so far was restraining herself. At the moment, she was instead appraising the “note” left by my mysterious graffiti artist (whom I still suspected was Cybill) and moving her tongue back and forth on her front teeth.

Phyllis Coates, looking for a good feature story even if I couldn’t unmask Everett’s killer, had arrived with her notebook and informed me she’d take down as much of what was said as possible. Great. Having a friend who runs a newspaper isn’t always an asset, but I’d invited her, fool that I am.

Brenda Leskanik had not yet arrived. Maybe my powers of persuasion were not what I had imagined them to be. Or maybe Brenda had more to hide than simply some scarred-over pain involving her dead ex-husband and her possibly-less-dead son.

Katrina Holm arrived a few minutes before the appointed hour. She looked tired, her eyes were a little puffy, and she clearly had to steel herself before walking into the room. But once inside, she showed no hesitance and said hello to me. She introduced herself to Mom, Melissa and a few of the others, though not to Cybill (who at that time was “clearing her mind” on one side of the room, a state achieved, apparently, by putting her fingers to her temples).

I was about to make my way to Katrina to ask if she’d brought a photograph when the guests of honor, Helen and Dave Boffice, drove up at the last minute in a very sleek-looking but nondescript car that had probably cost more than my entire budget for on-site renovations this year, a far cry from the plain old Toyota Dave had been driving when I was following him. After a few moments, they tentatively came inside. Helen, in an incongruous hoodie and dark sunglasses that covered most of her face, looked like Lindsay Lohan out on yet another perp walk; Dave’s eyes were hooded and he assessed the room carefully. They stood as conspicuously as people can stand when trying not to be noticed, on the opposite side of the room from Jeannie and Oliver, near the French doors to the backyard, probably as a contingency plan in case I had cleverly brought in undercover police officers who looked like middle-aged tourists, a jolly mother, a contractor inspecting the crown moldings, an eleven-year-old girl, her grandmother and a baby. Little did they know the only undercover cop on the property was afraid to walk inside.

As they passed me on the way in, Dave Boffice mumbled in my direction, “I have a gun.”

I wanted, immediately, to get Melissa out of the room. I thought to say, “Nice way to prove your innocence, Dave,” but he was already past me and taking up his station at the far end of the den.

Before I could get to Mom and Liss, however, Cybill was beginning her spiel.

“I’ll need candlelight only,” she said. Before anyone could respond, she reached over and hit the light switch, and the game room went completely dark. I could hear a couple of the guests pull in sharp breaths, but almost immediately, a match ignited in Cybill’s hand, and she lit three candles I had placed on the covered pool table. She was a good showman—she had total control of the room instantly.