The Skeleton Haunts a House (6 page)

M
adison and I barely got in the front door when Sid started yelping, “Put me down, I want out!”

“Stop rocking,” I said as I gladly put down the heavy duffel in the front hallway.

The bag unzipped from inside, and in a process that always entertains me, the bones reassembled themselves and Sid stood up. With a joyful rattle, he bounded into the living room where my parents were on the couch going through mail that had arrived in their absence.

“Dr. T! Dr. Mrs. T!” Sid said, jumping between them so he could hug one with each arm. “You two are a sight for sore eye sockets!” I'd told him on the way home that my parents had returned.

“Thank you, Sid,” Mom said. “You're looking well yourself.”

“I think I've lost weight since I saw you last. Does it show?”

“It's very becoming.”

“Tell us about the trip. I want to hear everything! Which place was your favorite? Did you like the food? Did you make it to Shakespeare's house? Did you see the Rosetta Stone? What about 221B Baker Street—you did go there, didn't you? And Scotland! Tell me about Scotland!”

“Sid, they can't tell you anything if you don't stop asking questions,” I pointed out.

“Sorry, sorry. Was the White Tower awesome?”

Mom and Phil laughed and started telling stories ranging from spotting a rainbow in Stratford-upon-Avon that seemed to end at Shakespeare's grave to viewing the Crown Jewels but somehow finding the reproductions at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum more impressive to the near-religious experiences of visiting the British Library and Trinity College Library in Dublin.

I was as interested as Sid was, and even Madison stopped texting now and then to listen in, but I grew more and more distracted as time went on. As fascinating as the wonders of the Jane Austen tour were, my mind couldn't help but wander back to the murder at McHades Hall. So as subtly as I could, I pulled out my cell phone to start checking the Web.

The police hadn't given out much info to the press other than the fact of the victim's death and the usual “investigations are proceeding” line, but a murder in a haunted house was lurid enough to spawn a lot of interest. Add in the facts that Kendall Fitzroy had been young and pretty, and seemed to have no shadows on her background, and it was an irresistible story. There were grief-stricken quotes from her family, boyfriend, and friends, including the trio of high school buddies who'd been with her the night of her death.

Apparently they had a tradition of attending the Howl together, and even though three of them were attending college out of town, they'd all come home for the festivities. An enterprising reporter had found a photo from a previous
Halloween of the four of them dressed as Disney villainesses. I couldn't decide if it was poignant or morbid.

Another reporter had researched deaths occurring in haunted houses, which turned out not to be unheard of, but all the others were suicides or accidents. I couldn't imagine why anybody would have gone to the trouble of committing murder in such a public location. Sure, it was dark and confusing, but there were so many people around. Could it have been a random murder of opportunity?

“Georgia!” Sid said, and I realized everybody else in the room was looking at me.

“Hmmm?”

“Do you know what time Deborah is planning to come over?” Mom asked.

Fortunately my sister texted me at that very moment. “She's on her way to Town House right now,” I said. “What kind of pizza do people want?” After we negotiated our order, Madison and I went to set the dining room table and get drinks. We had everything ready by the time Deborah arrived, and we dug right in.

It was, I realized, a special occasion of sorts. Since Madison had only been formally introduced to Sid during Mom and Phil's sabbatical, this was the first time all six of us had sat down to eat together. Not that Sid actually ate, of course, but he was there at the table. I wasn't the only one who noticed, either. Sid was grinning to beat the band. It's not easy to have facial expressions when you're a skeleton and don't technically have a face, but somehow he manages.

After dinner was eaten and cleaned up, my parents went to their room to finish unpacking and Madison got picked up by a friend to hang at another friend's house. Deborah, Sid, and I ended up in the living room.

“So let's talk murder,” Sid said. “Deborah, I know you'd
rather Georgia and I not stick our noses in things like this, but this time I think—”

“Stow it, Bone Boy. I want you to stick your nose in. Or nasal cavity, if that's all you've got to work with.”

“You do?” he said, eye holes wide with astonishment.

She nodded. “It's Georgia who's balking.”

He turned to me. “You are?”

“I just don't see why we need to get involved.”

“Come on, we all know you're going to,” Deborah said. “Sid is ready and raring to play Sherlock Bones, and you like being Dr. Watson.”

“Why isn't he Dr. Watson?”

“Because Sherlock Thackery sounds lame,” Sid said. “And you are a doctor.”

“But—”

Deborah cleared her throat loudly. “Georgia, you can be Holmes, or Nancy Drew, or Jessica Fletcher. Just find out what happened to that girl. It's not like I ask you for much.”

I couldn't argue with that. Over the years, my big sister had helped me with child care, loans, and keeping an eye on our parents while I was living elsewhere. Besides which, the way my mind had started wandering earlier, I knew I was already hooked. “If you really want me to—”

“Want
us
to!” Sid put in.

“If you want us to, we will. But knowing why could help.”

“Fine! I want you to solve this because the murder was my fault.”

“Excuse me?”

“What was the first thing Louis asked about? Security footage! I should have put cameras in there. If I had, that girl would be alive, or at least we'd know who killed her. But the McQuaids said there wasn't enough money in the budget, and I let it go. I should have insisted that they find
the money. Or I should have put in more room monitors. Security is my business, and then I go and let one of my people—I let one of my customers get killed.”

“Wait, back up. What do you mean one of your people? Kendall Fitzroy wasn't one of yours.”

“I misspoke.”

The patella she had! “Deborah, do you think one of your cast members killed that girl?”

“Well who else could it have been? Who but a cast member would have been able to attack her from behind the scrim, and know how to get out of there without being seen?”

“The police seem comfortable with the idea that an outsider could have committed the crime or they wouldn't be trying to find Scooby-Doo.”

“Maybe,” she said, “but they were questioning the cast members pretty hard last night.”

“They're going to question anybody and everybody: Kendall Fitzroy's friends and family and especially her boyfriend. So of course they'll talk to your people. If nothing else, they may have seen something useful. That doesn't make them active suspects.”

“I guess. It's just that all last night while I was watching the cops work, I kept thinking of things I could have done. Things I should have done.” She took a deep breath. “This may not be something you get, because you've never been in charge of a business, but I've run my own place since I got out of school, and the first thing I learned is that when you're the boss, everything that goes wrong is your fault.”

“‘The buck stops here,'” I quoted.

“That's the way I see it, anyway. That girl came to McHades to have a good time. Maybe she was going to get scared and scream a little, but at the end of the evening, she'd be laughing because she knew it wasn't really dangerous. She trusted me to keep her safe, and I failed her. I can't bring her
back, so I want to be damned sure the killer doesn't get away with it. I could sit on my hands and let the cops do whatever it is they do, but what if the stuff with Sid puts them off their game? Or I could try to snoop around myself, but I'm no good at that kind of thing. You and Sid are. You've solved murders the cops didn't even know about.”

“They'd have been able to solve them if they'd known about them,” I said.

“Possibly, and if they beat you to the punch this time, that's okay by me. But I'm not taking a chance on it. I want you and Sid on the job, if you're willing.”

“Of course we're willing,” said Sid. “Hang on while I get something to take notes on.” I'm not sure that my grocery shopping notepad from the kitchen, complete with twee pictures of fruits and vegetables, was quite the right thing, but it was handy. “The police didn't say much where I could hear them last night, so I need you two to fill me in.”

I rapped on his skull. “You are pretty hollow in there.”

“Very droll. Facts, please?”

“Fine.” I told him about how we'd found out about the murder, and what had happened since, with Deborah adding the details I missed.

Sid jotted down notes as we went. “Deborah, did you get anything else from your pal Louis? Did he tell you who he suspects?”

I said, “He suspects you, or whoever it was in the Scooby suit.”

“Then he's an idiot, right, Deborah?” Sid said.

I expected her to join in on the Trash Louis party, but instead she said, “He's not that bad. You have to admit that your disappearance looks suspicious.”

Sid and I exchanged glances, mine with raised eyebrows and his with no eyebrows at all. Was Deborah warming up to Louis?

Sid opened his jaw to say something, but I shook my head. Nothing would set Deborah off faster than teasing her about a romance that might or might not exist, and she'd already had a rough weekend.

Instead I said, “You spent a lot of time over at the haunt today, plus you were at Stuart Hall last night longer than I was. You must have heard something we can use.”

“What about those three friends that were with our victim?” Sid asked. “What were their names?”

“I don't remember.”

I didn't, either, and Sid looked vexed until I said, “The online news story I read mentioned their names.”

“What about the boyfriend's name?”

“That's online, too,” I said.

“Good. One always looks at the boyfriend first,” he said solemnly.

“But the boyfriend wasn't in the haunt,” Deborah said.

“He could have been,” Sid said. “If he was in costume and managed to get into the same group as the victim, he could have killed her and been long gone by the time the body was found.”

“There were also those people who scooted out when my security guys were trying to lock the building down. It's not like my guys could tase them,” Deborah said.

“So for suspects,” I said, “we've got Kendall's friends, family, and boyfriend. Plus the crew of the haunt and anybody who went through the haunt with Kendall.”

Deborah said, “Actually, it could have been somebody from two groups before Kendall's to two after. When we're running at full capacity, it's four groups in the haunt at once. Technically their guides are supposed to keep up with them, but people get separated from their groups all the time. They get freaked by a particular room and go past very quickly, or they get freaked and freeze. Or they are freaks and stop and stare
at a particular scare area. The guides keep things moving, but it's dark and it's confused. Just about anybody in the haunt at that time could have gotten to the zombie room, killed her, and then either gone on ahead or backtracked.”

“So forty-eight more suspects,” I said.

“Forty-seven,” Sid said. “You don't have to count Kendall.”

“Fine, only forty-seven. I'm so relieved.”

“Forget the numbers,” Sid said. “Let's try from the other direction. What do we know about the victim?”

I said, “I didn't get a chance to do a lot of research, but nothing I saw online gives a hint of why somebody might have wanted to kill her.”

Deborah sighed. “This is starting to sound impossible.”

“No, no, no,” Sid said. “We're just getting started. You leave this to us. I'm going online right now to see what I can dig up.” He was up the stairs in a bony flash.

Deborah looked at me.

“You asked for it,” I pointed out.

“I guess I did.” She hesitated, then said, “Just be careful, all right. I do want this thing solved, but . . . you know.”

Another sister might have gone on to say how important I was to her, or that she hated the idea of even a hair on my head getting a split end, but Deborah wasn't that sister. Instead she said, “I'm going to Arturo's to get some ice cream. You want to come with?”

Spurred on by her ice-cream-sensing superpower, Madison texted me to ask for a ride home right after we left Arturo's, so we swung by to get her before taking the bounty home to share with my parents. They confessed to trying ice cream in many different places on their travels, but swore that nothing they found had compared to Arturo's dark chocolate. That led to more travel tales, to which I paid closer attention.

By the time they ran out of stories, it was time for Deborah to go home and for the rest of us to go to bed. Except Sid, of course. He'd kept us company for the ice cream party, but not having the demands of the flesh, as Phil put it, he didn't need to sleep. So instead he spent the night in his attic doing homework for the online class in art history he was taking and seeing what he could find out about Kendall Fitzroy.

When I got up Sunday morning, I found a neatly formatted dossier about the dead girl slipped under my bedroom door. Kendall Fitzroy had grown up in Pennycross and graduated from Pennycross High School, the same school Madison attended. Kendall was in her sophomore year at Brandeis University, studying business administration, and came home for the weekend every month or so. She'd been dating another student for several months, and there was no indication that they were having problems. Nor were there any broody ex-boyfriends around. Kendall wasn't known to have had any problems with her younger sister Bianca or her happily married parents. She had a ginger cat named Fluffy.