Haunted Guest House Mystery 03-Old Haunts (6 page)

“I had something stuck in my teeth,” I told him. I had to stall just a little so Maxie and Paul could hear the whole conversation.

Mrs. Spassky stuck her head in through the swinging kitchen door. “Sorry to bother you, Alison dear,” she said.

“No bother, Mrs. Spassky. Do you need something?” Keep talking until Paul and Maxie get here, okay? Nice guest.

“The name of a store where we can get salt-water taffy. My sister says you can’t vacation at the beach and not bring home salt-water taffy.” Mrs. Spassky’s eyes rolled just a bit; she clearly thought Mrs. Fischer was being silly. Then she caught sight of Luther, and examined him closely. No doubt she was comparing him to Steven, whom she still saw as my husband.

“I know just the place,” I told her. “Sweet Tooth, at the corner of Harbor Avenue and North Haven.”

Mrs. Spassky gave Luther a few more ogles and nodded without making eye contact. “Thank you, dear.” She left the kitchen just as Paul and Maxie appeared through the kitchen wall. Paul still had a quizzical look on his face, but Maxie stopped in what would have been her tracks if she’d been walking. Her hand went to her mouth.

“Luther,” she whispered.

Luther’s head turned a little, as if he’d heard his name spoken. But he just blinked, and looked back at me.

“You came here to talk to Phyllis at the
Chronicle
,” I said, to distract Luther. Didn’t want him thinking he might have heard a voice. “How did that lead to your looking for a detective?”

“I wasn’t looking for a detective,” Luther said. “It hadn’t occurred to me before your friend mentioned you had a license, and then it seemed the logical thing—you have a mystery; you hire a detective.”

“There are plenty in the phone book,” I said. “I’ll recommend one.” I didn’t actually know any, but I could pick a name out of the Yellow Pages as well or better than most.

“No, it has to be someone who cares. You told me before a little bit about your connection. Maxie owned this house, and now you own it. That’s too huge to be a coincidence. It’s magic, or luck, or Maxie’s spirit, or something.”

Maxie grinned at me and mouthed the word
spirit
. She clearly found that hilarious.

“It’s just a coincidence,” I said.

Luther shook his head. “I saw Big Bob just before he disappeared. He said he was coming here to Harbor Haven.” Luther still looked a little spooked (pardon the expression), but was focusing again on my question. “Something about visiting his ex-wife.”

Maxie gasped.

“Why?” I asked.

Luther nodded, and took off his dark sunglasses. His eyes were narrow, as if constantly squinting into the sun. And he was facing away from the window. “I’m not sure,” he said, “but he always felt bad about the way it ended. He’d just found out Maxie was here, and he said he was going to go see her, maybe he could make things right.”

Maxie was listening with an expression of incredulity. She appeared to be crying, although there were no tears falling from her eyes.

“He wanted to reconcile with his wife?” I asked. That had seemed the way Luther’s story was headed.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “He said it was all about just making it up to her about the way they’d split, but he might have wanted to start back up again. He really loved Maxie. If you knew her, you’d understand.”

“I’ll bet,” I said before I thought about it.

“Bet your ass,” Maxie retorted, her voice scratchy.

Luther looked at me. “You don’t believe me?” he asked.

Snap back, Alison. The man doesn’t know Maxie’s here in the room with you.
“Oh, I believe you, Luther,” I said. “But I’m still not the person you want investigating Big Bob’s murder. The police are really good at that sort of thing.”

Luther stood up, as if being burdened by the chair was now far too limiting a condition for him. “The cops don’t care about some biker getting himself beat to death,” he said. “To them, it’s like a gang killing. One less biker to worry about. They’ll pay lip service to it, stuff it in the cold case file, and nothing will ever happen. I need someone who won’t give up on it.”

Maxie nodded her head—yes, that was the way it would be.

“That’s not me,” I argued to both of them, noting that Paul, standing a foot or so off the kitchen floor in one corner and stroking his goatee, wasn’t being any help. “I have to run this guesthouse. I have paying guests here.”

“You’ve done it for people you barely knew,” Maxie said quietly.

Luther didn’t react to her voice this time. “Just take a look,” he said. “Spend an afternoon on it. I’ll pay you.”

Senior Plus had booked a number of rooms during the summer, and there had been some money when a low-budget reality-TV show called
Down the Shore
had shot its second season in the house, but my guesthouse was still far from being a gold mine. I had expenses, not the least of which was my mortgage on the house. I had to save for Melissa’s education. And The Swine’s child-support payments were, let’s say, sporadic. A paying job was not something I could turn down flat without a really good reason.

“I’m afraid of violent people,” I told Luther (and by extension, Maxie). I thought that was a really good reason. “And I’m not interested in getting someone who has already killed a great big man mad at me. I don’t have that kind of dedication, Luther.” For some reason, Luther smiled at the words “great big man.” “You don’t want someone like me investigating a violent crime.”

“I’m not asking you to catch them, just to find out,” he argued. “It happened two years ago. Whoever did it is probably long gone. But I need to know what happened. The man was a friend of mine. A good friend. Can you understand what it’s like to have someone like that just vanish?”

It probably was unfair of me to think of The Swine, but I nodded.

“Then certainly you can understand how I feel,” Luther said.

“Maybe I do, but that doesn’t make me the right person for the job. I’m not a great investigator, Luther; I’ll tell you the truth. And if I take on this job for you, I’m more than likely to mess it up. It means too much to you to allow that. Don’t ask me.”

Paul, who had raised his eyebrows at the phrase “not a great investigator,” shook his head and said, “You’re not being fair, Alison.”

Luther’s voice was surprisingly gentle when he said, “But I
am
asking you. Please, Alison. Spend a day, an afternoon, and see what you can find out. If it’s nothing, then it’s nothing, and I’ll move on. But if there’s a chance I could know what happened to Big Bob, it’s worth taking.”

“You have to,” Maxie said. She wasn’t looking at me. “You just have to.”

“Do I have to say it again?” I asked. “I’m afraid, okay? I don’t want to do this. I’ve done things like it before, and I ended up terrified. I don’t want that again. Please.”

I walked out of the kitchen and into the den—which I had converted from a dining room to discourage any thought of food being served here—where all five of my Senior Plus Tours guests were presently gathered.

Mrs. Fischer and Mrs. Spassky were just heading out the door on their taffy expedition. Mr. and Mrs. Westen, who had insisted I call them Albert and Francie, were sitting on the sofa, reading. She had the latest Harlan Coben thriller, and he was reading
The Bridges of Madison County
. Don Petrone sat looking elegant in his blazer and long pants (and not sweating, which was remarkable even in the air-conditioning). The man should have been wearing a captain’s hat.

Lucy Simone, the youngest of the current group, was out with friends from the area. She wasn’t one of the Senior Plus guests—she was a native New Jerseyan who’d switched coasts after college. It was not a beach vacation for her, since the ocean wasn’t exactly a novelty for someone from California. The Swine was taking up the last available room.

The five of them in the den all looked up when I walked in. I must have had a look of despair on my face, because they all appeared concerned when they saw me.

“Are you all right, dear?” Mrs. Fischer asked.

“Just fine,” I said, even though I felt like I was being pressured into something I really didn’t want to do. “Just trying to hold onto my convictions.”

“Convictions?” Francie, a sixtyish woman with flaming-red hair reminiscent of Lucille Ball or Bozo the Clown, asked. “Are you an ex-con?”

“No, Francie,” Don, who was even wearing an actual ascot in the mid-nineties weather, admonished. “Convictions, like in your principles.”

I winced, anticipating a follow-up comment from Francie about the state of public schools’ administration, but luckily, she remained silent. From behind me, however, I heard Maxie’s voice, and it didn’t sound happy.

“You won’t do this for me?” she asked.

Immediately, I did a mental inventory of the guests. Everyone in the room had come via Senior Plus Tours, which meant they had come looking for ghosts. I could in fact be seen speaking to someone who wasn’t visible and still stand a chance of not being considered a raving lunatic. So I turned and saw Luther in the doorway to the kitchen, looking pained. Above his head was Maxie, hovering over the kitchen door, wearing a black T-shirt with “Good to the Last Drop” emblazoned on her bust.

I couldn’t talk to Maxie in front of Luther, but I could talk to Luther. “I won’t do this for you,” I said, looking just a little above his head. He must have thought I had some strange astigmatism.

And, of course, that was when I heard The Swine’s voice from the entrance to the foyer, behind me. “Which one of us are you talking to, Alison?” he asked.

“You’d do it for anybody else, but not me?” Maxie demanded, as if there was no one else in the room. Maxie didn’t much care about anyone else being in the room. She could see them, she could hear them, she could even sort of touch them, but for the most part, she ignored the guests except during the two-a-day spook shows she knew were necessary to my Senior Plus contract. “I help you out every single day with this little guesthouse of yours, and you can’t do this one thing for me?”

“It’s one of the ghosts,” Francie piped up to Steven. “She’s talking to one of the ghosts.” Thanks a heap, Francie.

“Ghosts?” The Swine put on a look of absolute bafflement. Melissa, at his side with the inevitable ugly stuffed animal I’m sure Steven had “won” for her at the boardwalk (it looked kind of like a neon-orange goat), looked helplessly at me.

“Ghosts?” Luther echoed. Francie’s head turned between Steven and Luther like she was watching a tennis match.

“Sure,” Francie went on. “There are ghosts haunting this place. It’s why I came here.”

Luther did what people do when they hear there might be ghosts in the room. He looked up and scanned the ceiling. I understand it, but they’re almost never there.

Melissa, meanwhile, was intent on getting her father out of the room, and if she could, I resolved to increase her allowance. “Come on, Daddy,” she tried. “I want to see how the tiger looks in my room.” Oh, so it was a
tiger
?

But Steven wasn’t buying. “Ghosts, Alison?” he asked.

I was about to suggest we go into the kitchen to talk when Luther walked over to me and looked seriously down at my face. “You sure I can’t change your mind?” he asked.

Steven’s eyes widened a bit. He was getting the wrong idea. Good.

“Find someone better for you,” I answered. “I’m not the right one.”

“I think you are,” Luther said. “And I don’t plan on giving up.”

The Swine’s mouth dropped open.

Luther, his point made, nodded at me, turned, and left, walking right past Steven and Melissa as he did. My daughter watched him go with a strange look on her face, then looked me in the eye and asked, “Who was
that
?”

“I’ll talk to you later,” I told her. “Steven, can I see you in the kitchen for a moment?”

Before The Swine could respond, however, Paul rose up through the floorboards to stand directly in front of me. “We need to talk,” he said. That wasn’t ever a good thing. Both his look and his tone communicated some urgency, and that was even worse. Paul wasn’t going to be dissuaded.

“Certainly,” my ex-husband said, and started to head for the kitchen.

“Not
now
,” I told him. “I meant later, at dinner tonight.”

A conspiratorial twinkle appeared in my ex-husband’s eyes. “You’re inviting me to dinner?” he asked.

“Strictly business,” I told him.

Melissa had heard Paul, and knew her father shouldn’t find out about our two less-than-alive tenants, so she jumped in, a sneaky trait she did not get from my DNA. “Come on, Daddy,” she reiterated. “I want you to see how the tiger looks in my room.” She took Steven by the hand and led him, looking bewildered, toward the stairs.

A little late, but a small increase in allowance would be a possibility.

“Now,” Paul said, as if I hadn’t gotten the message the first time.

I looked at the assembled guests, whose level of intrigue ranged from rapt attention with an expression of salacious anticipation (Francie) to complete and utter disinterest (Albert). The two sisters, in their eighties and self-assured, were watching, but discreetly, as they quietly began discussing their taffy-shopping plans. Mrs. Fischer and Mrs. Spassky had class. Don Petrone merely looked dapper and said nothing.

“I’ll be in the attic if anyone needs me,” I said to the room.

“Where will you be if we don’t need you?” Albert asked. The man was a laff riot.

I chuckled. “That’s very funny, Albert.” Yeah, I’m a businesswoman.

Paul rose through the room and vanished into the ceiling. This was his subtle signal that I should get my butt up to the attic pronto. Seeing little choice, I did exactly that.

Once I made it all the way upstairs, thinking all the way that moving my daughter up this many flights might not be a great idea after all, I found both Paul and Maxie waiting to ambush me in my own attic. So I decided, having anticipated this gambit, to do a little work on the construction site at the same time. I think better when I’m doing something with my hands.

“Let’s cut to the chase,” I said. “I know what you’re going to say, and you know what I’m going to say.”