Haunted Guest House Mystery 03-Old Haunts (11 page)

“A break?” Miss Sharp was slower on the uptake than a one-armed drummer.

“Sure. Go in the back and get yourself a cup of coffee. Powder your nose. Find your purse and take a piece of chewing gum out of it. Just for a minute, no longer than that.”

Had there been an independently powered lightbulb in the area, it would have illuminated over her head at that moment. “Oh!” she squealed. “I get it!” She punched a few keys on her computer keyboard, with the screen facing away from me, and waited for the proper data to appear. Then she looked back at me, winked, and in a voice too exaggerated for a third-grade pageant about Patrick Henry, said, “Well, I think I’ll just get myself a cup of coffee. Don’t look at that screen, now!”

“Oh, I won’t,” I promised.

Megan Sharp leaned over the counter and hissed at me, “I really meant that you should, you know.”

I nodded. “I know.”

She smiled and exited through the door behind her, stopping to wink one more time.

Sighing heavily, I pulled myself up onto the counter and into a sitting position. From there, I could reach Megan’s computer screen, and turn it so it could be read. It took me perhaps thirty seconds to copy down the contact information for Julia MacKenzie on a notepad I had in my tote bag, turn the screen back, and hop down off the counter.

I left the office before Megan returned, and only on the way out did I notice the security video camera over the door.

It appeared to be unplugged. If only the place had sold Twinkies.

Nine

I tried the phone number listed for Julia MacKenzie immediately, and found that it had been disconnected. This was not terribly surprising, seeing as how it was obtained through records that were at least two years old. But the residence address in Gilford Park would take me about forty minutes to reach, so would have to be left until the next day. I had to be back at the house for the pre-lunch spook show (Paul was adding a guitar played by an invisible ghost today, in addition to the usual flying objects and “spooky” noises made by Maxie with an old hacksaw I’d found in the basement). I knew I could count on Paul to perform for the guests in my absence, but Maxie was somewhat more…mercurial in her moods.

Besides, I had to form a plan to investigate Big Bob’s murder, and on that, at least, I could consult the other licensed (if somewhat deceased) private detective in the house.

I got back to the guesthouse at about ten. That left roughly an hour before the next “performance,” which was enough time to talk to Paul about a Big Bob plan and perhaps visit with my daughter, whom I had not seen outside the company of her father for days now, except when she was working at her “summer job,” which was cleaning some of the guest rooms and sweeping off the front porch, for which she was paid ten dollars an hour, far too high a price. But I was the idiot who’d negotiated the deal, so I couldn’t complain.

As if she knew my wishes, Melissa was on the front porch when I pulled up in my prehistoric Volvo wagon, cranky in the summer weather so alien to its native Sweden. That was one reason it had no air conditioner, so I was fairly well drenched in sweat by the time I stopped the car and extricated myself from the driver’s seat.

I had hung a glider on the front porch, because that’s what you do in front of an enormous Victorian built to look especially inviting during the warm-weather months. I had never seen one of the guests so much as consider sitting on the glider, but in theory, it was a good idea. Melissa sat on it now, not exactly swinging but making sure it stayed vaguely in motion.

“What’s up, cookie?” I said by way of greeting. Okay, so I was being more chipper than usual, but I was locked in a battle for the soul of my child, and all bets were off.

“Hi, Mom.” A voice that could race molasses and lose. The ten-year-old version of a subtle signal she was feeling sort of down.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, sitting next to her on the glider but keeping my feet off the floor so it could continue to glide. “Did you just remember that school is a mere seven weeks away?”

“No, but thanks for the reminder.”

“Come on, spill. It’s the middle of the summer, you have your friends around and time on your hands, yet you’re sitting here looking like someone ran over your pet wildebeest. So what’s the problem?”

It was going to be something Swine-related, I knew. And I would have to take great pains to react without anger. Melissa was testing me—Steven was the magical parent who would grant all wishes and never disagree, casting me as the evil witch who forced people to eat broccoli (I would
have
to do something with that broccoli tonight!) and refused to make things exactly the way they used to be, mostly because I actually
remembered
the way things used to be.

“Why did you marry Dad?” she asked me.

That caught me a little off balance. I’d expected something more on the order of, “Why don’t you love Daddy anymore?” Maybe this was going to lead up to that, because I had a really good answer all ready to go.

I had to improvise a bit on this one, though. “I loved him,” I said. “And he seemed to love me. I was sort of knocking around in my life, I couldn’t decide what I wanted, and he seemed like the only thing that was making me happy.”

But Melissa was already shaking her head; no, that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “What was it about him that made you want to marry him?” she asked.

“What’s this about really?” I countered.

“Answer the question.” The world will be deprived of a great prosecuting attorney if this child decides to forgo law school.

“What made me fall in love with your dad? Is that what you’re asking?” Melissa nodded, so I went on. “Well, when he wants to, he can be awfully charming. And in those days, he wanted to. Funny, concerned, interested, warm—he was all that. And he was going to work to help people do better in life. He was going to set up really inexpensive investments for people who didn’t have much money, so maybe they could have it a little easier. He used to believe in stuff like that.”

Melissa nodded, small movements of her head, as if taking an inventory of what I’d said. Maybe she was having a hard time picturing her parents as a couple of idealistic kids just starting out in life.

“Why don’t you feel like that now?” she asked. Ah, the question I’d been waiting for.

“Things changed,” I said. “Your dad changed. So did I. I wanted to come here and start this guesthouse, and he—”

“He wanted to go to California with Amee,” my daughter said, her eyes daring me to treat her like a little child who wouldn’t understand such things.

“Yes,” I said, biting my lip just a little. “That was the end of it, but it wasn’t the whole reason. He started getting caught up in making money, and that made him different. I had you, and that made
me
different. I wasn’t interested in the life he wanted, and he didn’t have time for the one I wanted. Before we got to the point where we hated each other, we figured it was best to split up.”

Again, there was the little nod of her head. She was absorbing. Maybe she’d think it over later and come back with more questions. I couldn’t decide whether that would be a good thing or a bad thing.

“That’s very interesting,” Melissa said. She stood up and started toward the front door. I grabbed hold of her arm as she passed me, and gave her a hug.

“Very interesting?” I asked. “Are you studying us for anthropology class?”

“What’s anthropology?”

“Don’t worry. You’ll find out in college.”

She walked back into the house, her eyes a little dreamy. This injection of her father into her life again might have been exciting, but it couldn’t be easy for her, and I wasn’t sure what to do about it. On the one hand, I felt like things had been a good deal simpler for both of us before Steven had come back. On the other…Well, it had been a long time since Liss had a dad. I couldn’t deny her that.

And as for any prospect of Steven becoming a permanent fixture in our lives again, he was going to have to do it from somewhere else within a week. Today was Monday. A week from today this crew of guests was going to be gone, and a new Senior Plus Tour was scheduled two days later, with every bed in every room of the house booked. My ex-husband would have to find himself somewhere else to live if he wanted to stay in New Jersey.

Added to my list of things to do: Talk to Steven about his residency plans.

But first there was the spook show, along with strategizing about the Big Bob case. I’d decided to call it “the Big Bob case” to sound more private-eye-like. And it required my attention, which meant it required Paul’s attention. I went inside to find him, and to enjoy my very expensive air-conditioning.

Before I could get to Paul, though, I decided to check in on the guests. I didn’t want to think—whether it was true or not—that I was neglecting them to concentrate on the investigations.

I toured the house briefly: Nobody was in the game room, which made me wonder why I’d bothered to get the pool table a new felt top. Very few guests ever used it, although my daughter was threatening to become the next Minnesota Fats. Maybe the space would be better suited to something else. I didn’t have a license to serve alcoholic beverages; otherwise, the oak-paneled, Tiffany-lamped room would have made a lovely bar, but that was far too expensive to even consider. Yes, I had cold beer and chilled wine in the room, but I did not charge for the drinks, and I made sure no one under twenty-one (not that I ever
got
a guest that young) could have access to them. Melissa and best-friend Wendy or anyone else who dropped by after school would
never
have access. Liss knew that Paul and Maxie were watching when I wasn’t around, and she wasn’t interested, anyway.

I already had a construction project upstairs to worry about, so the game room would remain a game room for the foreseeable future. I walked into the hallway and toward the library, a former walk-in pantry that had been turned into a sitting room by the family who lived here for decades before Maxie bought the place. I’d lined the walls with bookshelves and filled them with more than two thousand volumes, ranging from classics to the latest mass-market paperback mysteries.

Lucy Simone was sitting there now, reading a book of Emily Dickinson poetry. She looked up and smiled when I appeared in the doorway.

“What’s up?” I asked. “Not out enjoying the heat?”

“I’m waiting for my friends to pick me up—they’re out renting jet skis,” she answered. “They have this idea for the afternoon. You know how you could always do something when you’re home and you never do, but once you’re on vacation, it becomes a priority? It’s sort of like that.” Wow—Lucy really was a lot younger than my usual guests. She looked tentative, suddenly, as if she wanted to ask me something but didn’t know how.

“Something I can help you with?” I asked.

Lucy licked her lips. “Yeah. I guess. Look, I don’t know how to say this, exactly, but I think I saw something a little odd not too long ago.”

Something odd in my guesthouse. Who would have expected that?

“Odd?” I asked, as if everything around here was always completely normal.

“I was sitting here reading, maybe twenty minutes ago,” she said. “And I would swear I saw something fly by the door.”

This is a problem when some of the guests in the house aren’t aware of the, let’s say, special nature of the house. We’d been varying the times of the “spook shows” for when Lucy was out, and that was one of the reasons I was doing a check of the house now. But it wasn’t like I hadn’t anticipated this question coming up. The trick was to limit the damage as much as possible.

All I had to do was raise possibilities and let her decide which one to believe.

“You saw something fly by the door,” I said calmly, sounding like I didn’t want her to think she was crazy. “What did you think you saw go by? Could it have been a leaf, or even just a change in the light from the foyer?”

“It was a laptop computer,” Lucy said.

Okay, this was going to be a little trickier than I might have anticipated. “A laptop computer?” I repeated, giving myself time to think.

“Yeah. A MacBook. A real old one.” Yep, that was my laptop all right. Maxie must have been taking it upstairs to get on the Internet. She spends a lot of time on the Internet, and since her computer was confiscated by the police when she was murdered, I magnanimously allowed her to use mine. She, of course, never failed to let me know how old and out of date it was, but since I was the one who’d have to pay for a newer model, she’d just have to get by. It was an object too large for her to conceal in her clothing, the only way the ghosts can move physical objects around without them being seen. Maxie did not wear loose-fitting clothing.

“You sure?” I asked. Maybe I could plant a seed of doubt in Lucy’s mind.

She nodded confidently. “I work at the Apple Store in San Diego. And I can tell you, I haven’t sold one of those in years.”

“No, I meant are you sure you saw one fly by? Maybe you were thinking about work and thought you saw something.”