Night of the Living Deed (9 page)

“Understood,” I said. “I have absolutely no desire to take chances. But I have some rules of my own, and unless you agree to them, I’m nothing more than the owner and renovator of this guesthouse. Do
you
understand?”

He put on a face that he clearly thought was suave and so wasn’t; the attempt was kind of adorable. “State your terms,” he said.

“I have to get this house in shape, and on time, too. So I’m
not
making the PI game my full-time profession. I’ll do it when I can, but I won’t when I can’t. Any further little
pranks
on the part of anybody who . . . exists in this house will just set me back and make the investigation drag on.”

“Agreed,” Paul said.

“Hold on; I’m just warming up. Next, I’m investigating your deaths, but I’m also trying to find out who’s threatening
me
, and that’s going to take priority. No offense, but I’m still alive, and I’d like to stay that way. So if it comes down to a choice between your situation and mine, I’m going to opt for mine.”

“That’s reasonable,” Paul said, but he didn’t look as happy as before.

“Third—and without question, most important—I will not allow this project of yours to endanger my daughter in any way, shape or form. The
first
time there’s the slightest suggestion that Melissa could be in harm’s way, I’m finished gumshoeing. That is an absolute deal breaker. Okay?” I looked up at Paul, who was suspended just over the fireplace.

“The last thing I’d want is to put Melissa in danger, Alison. Believe me.” But I could see Paul didn’t like the idea of
anything
causing an automatic cancellation of my services. He folded his hands across his chest.

So did I. “I’ll believe you when you say you agree,” I told him.

“Alison. There will
never
be any danger to Melissa in connection to this investigation. I won’t stand for it.”

I nodded. “Now say that you agree to my terms.” He still hadn’t committed to the last one. “Say, ‘I agree.’ ”

“You understand perfectly that I have Melissa’s welfare . . .”

“Say. ‘I. Agree.’ ”

“I agree,” he said.

“Okay.” I nodded. “What’s my first assignment, boss?”

 

“They weren’t murdered; they committed suicide.” Detective Lieutenant Anita McElone (pronounced “Mack e-LONE-ee,” I’d been told), five-foot-eight and sturdy, hadn’t smiled when I’d introduced myself and was looking even less happy now. “And frankly, I don’t see why it’s any business of yours,” McElone said, barely looking up from her paperwork.

“Are you always this sympathetic, or did I catch you on an especially sensitive day?” I asked.

She looked up. I guessed she’d been operating on cop autopilot before, and this was the first thing I’d said that had captured her attention. “How well did you know these two people?” she asked.

“I didn’t know them at all. I own the house that they died in.”

“So why do you care what happened to them?” McElone asked. Her face indicated concentration.

I reached into my canvas tote bag and pulled out the laptop computer. “Can I show you something?” I asked her.

“I’m here until five.” She sighed.

I hit the power button on the computer and waited the usual eternity until it booted up. I have the same affinity for technology that antelopes have for screwdrivers.

Hand tools, I can use. Electric ones, battery-operated ones, cordless screwdrivers (has there ever been a
corded
screwdriver?). Dad taught me all about hand tools. I can hear him now, patiently saying, “It’s sharp, baby girl. Don’t ever think you can treat it casually.” So I knew about tools. Things where you push a button and it turns or heats up. Sure.

But “smart” machines? We have a relationship that is something less than friendly but just short of adversarial. We simply don’t understand each other. Much like with every man I’ve ever dated.

During the wait, McElone had enough time to finish whatever paperwork she’d been working on, clean off her desk and check a mirror to see if her makeup was smeared (it wasn’t). Then she killed some more time getting a new pen out of her desk drawer.

It’s possible my laptop is a little old and slow.

When it finally did show signs of life, I clicked—after a little effort—on the e-mail program. And, on cue, the word processor opened. I have a hard time figuring out which little box is supposed to be which.

McElone gave me a withering look and took the computer out of my hands.

“What exactly is it I’m supposed to see?” she asked.

“It’s the last e-mail I received,” I told her, properly mortified by my lack of techno-skill.

In roughly four seconds, McElone had managed to pull up the proper information and see the threatening message. Her eyes looked concerned, but her voice betrayed no such emotion.

“I don’t suppose you recognize the sender’s e-mail address?” she asked.

“Yeah. Let’s go to his house and arrest him, okay?”

“So you don’t have any idea who might be sending you this.” She ignored my sarcasm. “Is this the only such message you’ve received?” Again, no emotion in her voice.

I nodded. “But Maxie Malone, the previous homeowner, was getting the same kind of threats before she and Paul Harrison, the private detective, were killed.”

McElone raised an eyebrow. “How do you know?”

Luckily, Paul had anticipated that question for me. “I found Maxie’s laptop in the attic,” I said. I’d actually found it there because Maxie had directed me to it, saying she “used to go up there to think.” (And I believed she still went there occasionally—both of the ghosts would vanish for periods of time, and then return without explanation.) I pulled it out of the tote bag and handed it over to McElone.

“I wish you’d worn gloves,” she said. I left it to her to get the second computer working properly. It took a lot less time to warm up than my weathered old laptop.

McElone clicked quickly here and there and came up with Maxie’s inbox. “Aha,” she said quietly.

“You see what I mean?” I knew, both because I’d looked and because the Dead Duo had told me, that Maxie had received at least eight threatening e-mails in the two weeks before she and Paul had died.

“Yes,” McElone said. She consulted the file in front of her. “But the medical examiner’s report indicated they’d each taken at least twenty sleeping pills. You can’t exactly sneak a dosage that large into someone’s food or drink.”

“Did anyone come asking when you notified their next of kin?” I asked. Paul had told me he had a brother in Toronto, and Maxie had mumbled something about it being none of my business. But they had no idea if anyone had come to claim their remains.

“May I see your badge?” McElone asked.

“My what?”

“Your badge. You see, I only have to answer questions like that when they’re asked by my superiors in the police force or someone from the prosecutor’s office. So if you show me your badge, I’ll be happy to reply.”

“There’s no need to be huffy about it,” I said, more to myself than to the detective.

“Sure there is.” McElone scowled at me. “Look, Ms. Kerby—I’m still new here. I’ve only been a detective on this force for two months. You’re wasting my time over two suicides that have already been cleared by my predecessor, Detective Westmoreland, a man everyone in this building adored.”

“Then you won’t reopen the case?” I asked. That was the outcome Paul had hoped would result from this meeting. He wouldn’t be pleased.

McElone grunted. “I’ll do some looking based on the threatening e-mails, but I still don’t think it’s murder,” she said.

“It doesn’t make sense,” I told her. “Why would these two people commit suicide?”

McElone shrugged. “Lovers’ quarrel?”

I practically spat. “Yeah, right!”

Her eyes narrowed. “
How
well did you know these people?” she asked again.

Oops. “Um, we never met,” I said. “I bought the house almost a year after they died.”

“Uh-huh. And where were you living at that time?” Great. Paul sends me to open the investigation, and immediately I become the chief suspect. In a double suicide.

“In Red Bank. I was just filing for divorce then.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” she said in a voice that indicated she couldn’t care less.

I stood up and reached a hand out for my laptop. “Well, I guess I’ve been wasting your time,” I said.

McElone did not offer the computers back. “I don’t know that yet,” she said. “Until I have this figured out, I’m going to need to keep these.”

I blanched. I didn’t care what she did with Maxie’s laptop, but I relied on my old dinosaur. “That’s not possible,” I sputtered.

“Sure it is,” McElone answered. “Watch how easy it is for me not to give it back.” She slipped the two computers into her desk drawer and wrote me out a receipt.

“What’s the matter?” I asked her. “Doesn’t the department give you your own computer?”

“You’ve given me evidence that someone is making terroristic threats against you,” the detective responded. “Until I determine whether or not a crime has been committed, those computers are staying.”

“And how long will that take?”

“It’s a small town,” McElone said. “We don’t get that much crime during the off-season. Shouldn’t take more than three or four days.”

“Days? My whole life is on that computer!” Suddenly, the separation from my ancient notebook computer seemed horrifying. Okay, so I don’t get along with technology, but that doesn’t mean I want to live without it. I couldn’t get along with The Swine, and . . .

Bad example.

“We have to follow up,” McElone said, her voice never showing a hint of emotion. The woman could probably watch
Old Yeller
and not tear up. “I promise I’ll call you the minute you can pick it up.”

In the end, I had no choice. But then, that was becoming my fallback position on just about everything.

I went to pick up Melissa from school. Maybe I could check my e-mail on her cell phone.

Paul had given me explicit instructions to come back to the house and report on my meeting with the police, but I didn’t. Instead, I picked Melissa up at school and tried to linger a few minutes, hoping to run into Mr. Barnes. No such luck, but Melissa was in a mood to “work on the house,” as she said, and she whined and begged to help enough that I relented quickly. I didn’t want my daughter anywhere near the two spirits in the guesthouse, particularly Maxie, but what could I do? It was where we lived, and no matter how many times she could go play at Wendy’s or do homework at another friend’s house, I really did miss having Melissa pitch in with the renovations (plus, I feel the need to pass on to her the skills Dad taught me). It’s not like I could I tell her I’d spent most of my mornings repairing damage done during the night by dead people. And anyway, I didn’t want her to be afraid in her own house. Though if there was one thing I’d learned since my knock on the head, it’s that you
should
be afraid of ghosts.

They’re a colossal pain in the butt.

We were working in the dining room, a large, long space with ornate moldings around the entrance and along the ceiling. Today’s jobs were to skillfully fill in cracks in the plaster (me), and
carefully
scrape the paint off the window frames to prepare them for staining later (Melissa, armed with Dad’s paint scraper but no chemical stripper).

I didn’t see Paul when we entered the house, which was odd—I figured he’d be waiting breathlessly (quite literally) for news of my meeting with Detective McElone. But Maxie wandered in from the kitchen, looking bored, or
pretending
to be bored.

Until she started staring directly at my daughter.

The way Maxie was looking at Melissa was creepier than anything I’d seen since the bucket made its impact with my cranium. And that’s saying something.

“Don’t do that window first,” I told Melissa. “Do this one, closer to me.”

“What’s the difference?”

“This one’s
closer to me
,” I said. Maxie smiled a truly bloodcurdling smile.

“Well, I don’t see what difference that makes,” Melissa protested. “This one looks out on the beach, and all I can see from that one is the house next door, and it’s all boarded up.”

“
Do this one
,” I said, a little too loudly.

Melissa grumbled, but she walked over and started scraping the window next to me, as I began sanding down a small crack in the plaster. Maxie, still grinning that evil grin, moved closer to Melissa.

“If we finish today, this room might actually be ready to be painted, and then we can do the floor, and we’ll have a whole room done,” I told Melissa, sounding way too cheerful.

Kids can see right through that. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“What do you mean, ‘What’s wrong?’ I just said we can almost have this room finished.”