The Thrill of the Haunt (3 page)

Yeah. I was fairly aware of the two spirits and figured Cybill should be as well since they were actually mentioned in the brochure. “Yes, there are,” I agreed with as sunny a tone as I could muster. “And you’ll be meeting them in just a little while now.”

“I’m not here to meet them,” she replied. “I’m here to drive them back to their graves.”

I had to think hard about what my reply should be. Luckily, Maxie was not in the room, or there might actually
have been crockery thrown through the air.

“Really?” was my imaginative response. I was taken off guard. Sue me.

“I am a recognized agent of cleansing,” Cybill said, as matter-of-factly as if I’d told her that I had once actually baked brownies for one of Melissa’s class sales (of course, two mothers later reported upset stomachs—their own—and I was asked not to contribute homemade pastry again). “I can rid your house of this infestation immediately, if you like. I will need only a few minutes to prepare.” She opened her suitcase and rummaged through her belongings. “I just need to find my sea salt.”

It occurred to me that the house was situated on a beach, so sea salt was not really in short supply, but instead, I told Cybill, “I really don’t think that will be necessary.”

She looked up from her task, puzzled. “You don’t?” she asked.

“No. You see, I use the idea of ghosts in the house to build my business. If you were to appear to drive them out, I wouldn’t be able to do that. The other people on the tour who came to see ghosts might feel cheated.” I felt it best to plant a seed that perhaps Paul and Maxie were imaginary. If she thought I was playing a con to drive up business in my guesthouse, she might go along with the “gag” and give up the idea of an exorcism.

But what if she really could do what she said?

“I see,” Cybill said, with a tone that didn’t make it at all clear that she did. “So you prefer that I wait until the end of the week, when the guests will believe they’ve gotten their money’s worth?”

Before I could answer, my father, who had recently resurfaced in my life as a ghost, “walked” in through the outside wall. Normally, Dad wouldn’t enter a guest’s room unless I asked him to, but he was good at sensing where I was at any given moment and then coming to that spot. “What’s going on?” he asked, eyeing Cybill. “She get lost on the way home from an opera?”

Dad knew I wouldn’t answer him in front of a guest, but it did occur to me in that moment that I should be very careful with Cybill. If she really was able to rid the house of ghosts, one of them might be Dad. I was not going to risk that.

“Well,” I said, answering her question, “I have another tour coming next week, and for a good number of weeks after that. I think I’ll have to decline your very generous offer, but thank you, anyway.”

Cybill’s eyes narrowed; this was clearly not the response she had anticipated. “You’re going to let your child live in a house with dangerous spirits just so you can make money?” she demanded.

This was taking an ugly turn. “The fact is, there’s no danger. I wouldn’t let her live with danger in any form,” I responded.

“Damn right,” Dad agreed.

Cybill pushed out her lips in a pout. “Really.”

“Yes. Really.” In the hospitality business, you have to do your very best not to tell your guests they’re being inappropriate. Or let your deceased father hit them with a vase. So I sent him a warning glance just as he was looking at one.

“Very well, then,” Cybill said.

“I do hope you’ll want to continue your stay with us,” I told her, thinking pretty much the exact opposite.

“I think I will,” she answered, with a tone I wasn’t crazy about. Then she went back to rummaging through her bag, which I saw as a gesture of dismissal, so I walked out, with Dad taking the direct route through the wall to the hallway.

“You do get an interesting crowd,” he said, once we were out of earshot.

“They pay the bills. What’s up? I wasn’t expecting you today.”

“Your mother kicked me out,” he said, giving me an ironic look. “Not permanently. She wants to get some stuff done around the house, and you know how she is. Can’t take a suggestion.”

Dad, who’d been sort of a home-improvement jack-of-all-trades in life, can’t resist telling Mom—or anyone else who can hear him—how things should be done. Mom probably just wanted to clean up without having a discussion about exactly which was the right mop to use on the kitchen floor. It was why they’d always gotten along best when Dad was working.

Now that Dad had reconnected with Melissa and me, he’d been dividing his time between my house (about a day or two a week, more when Melissa was on vacation), Mom’s place, and Madison Paint, the store where he’d spent so many hours hanging out with the owner, Sy Kaplan, and other contractors and painters when he was alive.

“You might micromanage just a little too much for her taste,” I agreed with Dad. “Listen, I want to talk to you about what I should do with my game room, but I have to go meet another guest arriving now. Can you stick around?”

“I’ve got nothing but time,” he said.

I went downstairs as Dad disappeared up into the ceiling, and I heard, “Hi, Grampa!” from upstairs. I could see through the front hallway window that my last guest was pulling into the driveway. I hustled down to the front door and went outside.

Helen Boffice was in her mid-thirties, about my age, and much younger than most of my other guests. She was very small and petite, dressed in jeans and a plain pink top, and driving a very sensible Toyota Camry that was maybe five years old. She looked about as normal as a person can look outside of a commercial for life insurance.

But she did not look happy. I realize that guests are not required to be in a cheerful mood when they arrive at the guesthouse, but it does worry me a bit when one shows up looking like she’d just been sentenced to two years at Rikers Island.

“You must be Helen,” I said, putting on my best warm-innkeeper demeanor. “I’m Alison Kerby. So glad to meet you.” I extended my hand, and Helen took it in a very businesslike manner.

“Helen Boffice,” she said, pronouncing it “BO-fi-chay.” I half expected a business card to be her next form of communication. “Thank you for booking me last-minute like this.”

“We’re happy to have you,” I said. “Can I help you with your bags?”

“Don’t have any,” Helen answered. “I’m not staying.”

Wow! All I’d done was shake the woman’s hand. “I don’t understand,” I said. “Is there something wrong with the guesthouse?” What I was really asking was,
Is there something wrong with me?
But you don’t just come out and say things like that to a person you met six seconds ago.

Helen shook her head. “Not at all. I’m sure this is a fine place to stay, but I don’t need it. That’s not why I booked the room.”

Enough Twenty Questions. “Why don’t you come up on the porch and sit, and you can tell me what you have in mind,” I said. Diplomacy, right? I’m good at diplomacy. I have a tween daughter.

Maxie appeared at my right as we walked to the porch. Helen sat on the glider I have there, looking as comfortable as Foghorn Leghorn at a KFC. “What’s going on?” Maxie asked, despite knowing I wouldn’t answer. Maxie saw the expression on Helen’s face and added, “She taking out a hit on somebody?” Out came her notepad again, out of Helen’s sight.

“What’s the problem?” I asked Helen, trying to ignore the ghost hovering just over my shoulder. I started to wonder how selective Cybill could be in her eviction process.

“I didn’t book the room for me to stay in,” Helen said. Her left hand was tightly covering her right, almost white-knuckled, so there was clearly some stress in her; I’d have thought a vacation by the shore, even a depleted shore, would have been just the thing for her. She was speaking quickly, seeming to want to get the words out before she lost her nerve. “I booked the room because I wanted to make a down payment before I spoke to you.”

“She’s a nut,” Maxie volunteered. Typically helpful Maxie.

“A down payment on what?” I asked.

But Helen didn’t seem to have heard me. “I live not far from here, in Marlboro,” she plowed on. “Originally, I
was
going to actually stay here for a few days, but I didn’t want to explain that to my husband.”

“I don’t get it,” I told her, trying to draw her eyes toward mine. “Why would you book a room at the guesthouse if you’re not going to stay here? What are you paying me for?”

“I got your name from an ad in the
Harbor Haven
Chronicle
, and when I did a Google search for you, I saw you run a guesthouse, too.” That’d teach me to be passive-aggressive with myself.

Too? It took a second for my brain to say, “Uh-oh . . .”

“So I thought,
Well, that’s killing two birds with one stone
,” Helen continued, still not looking at me, watching her own shoes move back and forth as the glider swayed. “I’ll pay for the guesthouse, and get the detective.”

Yup. That’s what I was afraid of. Now I had to pretend to be a professional private investigator again. I glanced at Maxie to send her urgent “GET PAUL” messages, but she was grinning and scribbling. “What is it you need investigated?” I asked.

Helen looked up from her feet, startled. “My husband, of course,” she said. “I believe he’s being unfaithful to me, and I want you to catch him at it so I can be sure.”

I closed my eyes. This was exactly the last thing I wanted right now. “Are you absolutely certain you want that kind of evidence?” I asked Helen, although I was definitely hoping for a particular response. “Maybe you’re misinterpreting signs or just being a little too suspicious. Do you want your husband to know you suspect him?”

“No,” Helen said, shaking her head vehemently. “That’s why I want to hire you. Because you can be discreet, and he won’t know I think anything’s going on until you can prove it.”

I have never been a hundred-percent committed to the private-investigator thing, and this was sounding like one of the reasons why. “This sort of thing can be terribly upsetting,” I tried. “Are you sure you want to face it head-on like that?”

Helen’s eyes showed determination and a hint of anger, but her voice was pure business. “I’m sure,” she said.

Her face was enough to convince me there was no escape. “If you’re sure,” I reiterated, and she nodded again, so hard and abruptly I feared for her neck muscles. “I’ll have to go get a voice recorder I use for all client interviews. Will you excuse me?”

“Of course,” Helen said.

I walked toward the front door, Maxie hot on my heels. “Voice recorder?” she asked. “You don’t need a voice recorder—I’m taking notes.”

Once inside the house—me through the door, Maxie through the wall—I turned to her. “Of course, you are,” I said. “But I needed to get away from her so I could tell you something.” I reached for my tote bag, which I keep on a hook by the door, and extracted the small voice-activated recorder I carry when doing interviews. I’d said I was going to get it, so now I had it.

Maxie looked eager, which is unusual for her. “What?” she asked.

“Go find Paul. Tell him I think we have a client.” I pulled a pen and reporter’s notebook from the tote as well. It had all been at my feet on the porch.

“It’ll make his day,” Maxie said as she dropped through the floor.

Paul, indeed, arrived on the porch even before I could get
back out there myself, and I found him floating next to Helen, stroking his goatee in his best Sherlock-Holmes-on-the-case manner. Rarely had I seen him look so happy. While he wasn’t exactly letting glee rule his face—he had to appear professional, even if I were the only one who could see him—his body language had straightened up since I last saw him just a little while ago, and his eyes were absolutely gleaming with interest.

I waited a moment before Paul noticed me and moved back a little; technically, I could have just barreled through him, but that’s just a little too creepy for me.

I made a show of taking out the recorder so Helen could see it, but I also had a pen and pad handy. Both were really just props, though, since the real purpose here was to get Helen to relate her story so Paul could hear it.

“Now,” I said to Helen, trying to avoid looking back at Paul. “Tell me everything from the very beginning.”

Helen did not seem upset; she didn’t even appear to be especially stressed anymore. She was clearly dealing with whatever this situation might be by treating it as a business proposition. She was composed and her voice carried little expression. She was relating the facts.

“I’ve been married to Dave for six years,” she began. “We’re not an overly affectionate couple, but we love each other. At least, that was the way I’d always seen our marriage. We both work long hours—I’m a human resources manager at an auto-parts supply company, and Dave works as a sales rep for a wireless provider, selling to business clients. We see each other at dinner about three times a week, I’d guess, and one of us is often away on the weekend. We travel a lot for business.”

This wasn’t getting us to why she thought her husband was cheating on her, but I know Paul is very devoted to the idea of letting clients talk at their own pace, so I did my best not to hurry her along.

“Was that the kind of marriage you expected?” I asked. “One that was mostly devoted to both your careers?”

Helen nodded. “We were both very honest with each other from the beginning. Neither of us wanted children, not even a dog. We loved each other, and we loved our work. We were both ambitious—Dave invests our money so that he can eventually own some technology franchises, and I’m hoping to work in the New York corporate office soon.”

Paul was watching Helen’s face for expressions, which were subtle at best, and listening for inflection that might betray emotion. Again, these were few and far between, which I was sure Paul would say made them that much more significant.

“Ask her how she met her husband,” Paul said when Helen stopped speaking for a moment, seeming to regroup and arrange her thoughts.

I passed the question along, and Helen answered, “We met at a singles bar; can you believe it?” She chuckled absently. “I don’t think I know anyone else, any other couple, who met that way. We did. Things were going along really quite well until this happened.” Her voice caught, just for a second, and Paul watched intently. I tried my best not to look at him, and if I did, Helen didn’t seem to notice.

“What happened, exactly?” I asked, without being prompted.

Helen seemed to steel herself to begin the more painful part of her story. “It’s the usual thing, I guess. You must have heard this a thousand times.” This was actually my first case involving a straying spouse (aside from my own straying spouse, but The Swine was long gone now). However, I saw no reason to tell our client that. “The two or three nights a week we had dinner together? That became one night a week. Maybe. Then Dave had to be away every weekend, not just some. And often, he said he slept at his office. It’s a cell-phone service provider;
nobody
sleeps in the office, ever. But he said he was working on a deal with a company in Japan, and the time difference was forcing him to stay there until three and four in the morning.”

Paul looked over at me, willing himself not to watch our client for a moment, which was clearly an effort on his part. “Ask this next question exactly as I tell you,” he said.

I listened, and asked Helen, “Is it possible your husband is doing something other than seeing someone else? Perhaps a gambling problem or a drug habit?” I wouldn’t have used the word
perhaps
, but I was basically taking dictation. With forced practice, I’ve gotten good at passing on Paul’s words almost as he says them. There are times I feel like an instrument, an amplifier between the living and the dead. Except my amplitude is low or something.

Helen’s mouth twitched, and for a tiny moment she actually seemed amused. “Dave had a drug problem when he was younger,” she said. “He went through rehab. I’ve never seen him so much as take a sip of wine.”

“People relapse,” I said.

“Not Dave. He’s exactly the same as he was the day I met him. Except he’s being unfaithful. And yes, I know who she is, if that was your next question.” Paul nodded, as if he were having the conversation with Helen himself.

“Who is she, and how do you know?” I asked. Paul gave me an approving glance—he says I’ve been getting better at anticipating the questions he wants me to ask—then focused on Helen again.

“Her name is Joyce Kinsler,” Helen said without hesitation, her unemotional armor back on. “I’ve seen e-mails he didn’t delete from his laptop and watched him field phone calls from her—the name appears on his iPhone before he picks up—when we’re together. She’s one of his clients. She works for a payroll management company in Freehold, Human Solutions.” She chuckled without amusement. “I think I might have sent them a résumé at one time or another.”

“Push her a little,” Paul said. Just then, Maxie, who apparently had been watching, maybe from the roof, descended onto the lawn next to us, wearing her traditional sprayed-on blue jeans and a black T-shirt with the legend “It Wasn’t Me” across her chest.

“Couldn’t your husband have been e-mailing and talking business with Ms. Kinsler?” I asked.

Helen shook her head. “My husband is an excellent businessman, Ms. Kerby, but he’s a terrible flirt, and I mean that literally. He’s bad at it. The texts, the cell calls, the e-mails—he could barely keep from giggling when he sent them. This was definitely
not
business. I saw one of the e-mails he sent, and believe me, they weren’t talking business.” She stared off for a moment. “She’s older than him, too. Maybe ten years.” She shook her head.

“Why—” Paul began, but I had my own question, and I asked it before he could finish his sentence.

“Why do you need me to confirm this for you if you know what he’s doing and with whom he’s doing it?” I asked, noting my excellent syntax. “New Jersey has no-fault divorce. You don’t need evidence.”

Paul pointed at me and said, “Excellent. Just what I was going to ask.”

Helen looked startled. She hadn’t heard Paul, of course, but it turned out that my question had taken her by surprise. “Oh, I don’t intend to divorce Dave, Ms. Kerby,” she said.

Paul and I exchanged a glance, which may have looked odd to Helen, but she said nothing. I was choosing not to relate Maxie’s reaction; suffice it to say it was the spelled-out version of initials frequently seen on the Internet when something surprising happens. I’ll leave it at that.

“You don’t want a divorce?” I said when I regained the use of my vocal cords.

Helen stuck out her lower lip in an expression that I usually see from Melissa, accompanied by “Duh . . .” But instead, Helen said, “Certainly not. I’m perfectly happy with the life we had before he started seeing this
woman
, and I intend to get that life back.”

Have you ever felt as if you were the slow-witted cousin at the Mensa family reunion? “How are you going to do that?” I asked. “And what do my services have to do with it?”

Helen might have been mentally considering alternatives to my services (which would have actually been okay with me), but she simply said, “You catch him in the act, and I let him know I have evidence of his indiscretion. He’ll fall back in line.”

“You’re going to use whatever I find to blackmail your husband into giving up his mistress?” Okay, so
mistress
wasn’t a word I use often, but this conversation was going in directions I hadn’t expected, and I was winging it.

“I don’t think I’d characterize it as blackmail, but that’s essentially what I had in mind, yes,” Helen told me.

I stole another glance at Paul, who was looking a little stunned, but when he saw me looking at him, he held out his hands and changed his expression to a pleading one. “I know it’s not what we usually do, but I could really use a case,” he said.

“Besides, this one sounds like a hoot,” Maxie added, and Paul’s look in return indicated she should go back to spelling out Internet expressions.

“If you wouldn’t call it blackmail, what would you call it?” I asked Helen.

She thought for a moment and answered, “Leverage.”

It was all I could do not to glare at Paul again, but a repeat of that motion would no doubt draw a question from the woman who, against my better judgment, was about to become our latest client.

I sighed. “Okay. Fill out our intake form, and write down all the details you can think of. Give me your address and your husband’s work address,” I said.

“Ask her to also include an approximation of her husband’s daily schedule, where he goes for lunch, whether he often stops for a drink on his way home, that sort of thing,” Paul added.

“So you’ll take the case?” Helen said.

“You’ve already paid for it,” I admitted. “It doesn’t seem like I have a choice.” And that time, I
did
risk a glance in Paul’s direction.

He looked thrilled.