Haunted Guest House Mystery 03-Old Haunts (3 page)

“What are you doing here?” I rasped when I had absorbed the sight.

Steven started as if shocked, looked at me, and patted Melissa on the shoulder, the universal signal to detach from a hug. Our daughter, ten-year-old traitor that she was, squealed at me, “Look, Mom! Daddy’s come home!”

Terrific. Almost two years of seeing to her every need, and Melissa was about to switch sides on me based on her father’s ability to walk through the door? Since he had walked through a similar door going in the other direction with a curvy blonde on his arm the last time I’d seen him, I was less impressed with this talent.

It sure was a good thing I wasn’t bitter, though.

Steven extricated himself from our daughter, who was currently cute-ing herself out of any inheritance
I
was going to leave for her, and folded his arms across his chest after he stood. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s a typical defensive posture. But his face gave off nothing but warm smiles and a hint of—was that sadness?—in his eyes.

“Alison. You look terrific.”

Oh, please. I knew very well that I looked horrendous—I was covered in sweat and dust—but that really wasn’t the argument I wanted to have just at the moment.

“I said, ‘What are you doing here?’” I’d fallen for his charming act once before, and ended up married. Then divorced. Then I started seeing ghosts. If I thought about it hard enough, my entire current situation could be seen as The Swine’s fault.

“I suppose I deserve that kind of welcome,” Steven said. “I know I didn’t treat you very well, but I want to try to make up for that.”

Melissa held up a small box. “Daddy brought me an iPod touch!” she chortled. Make no mistake, kids can be bought. Mine has a higher price than most, but all kids can be bought.

Before I could get another word in—and believe me, it was going to be a doozy—one of my Senior Plus Tours guests walked in from the den and smiled in my direction. Mrs. Fischer, who was here with her sister Mrs. Spassky, was a darling little lady easily in her mid-eighties who would have been described as “jolly” if she were forty pounds heavier.

“Alison, dear,” she began, leaning on her elegant cane with the carved eagle on its handle. “Can you recommend a good local dealer in antiques? I do so love the quaint atmosphere around this town, and I’m hoping to take some of it home with me.”

Luckily, having lived in Harbor Haven most of my life (except for that period during which I was married to The Swine), I knew almost all the storekeepers in the area, and had deals with some for a commission on purchases from those customers I sent their way. I do this only with those I know to be the best at what they do, you understand. It’s not about the money. Mostly.

“Why yes, Mrs. Fischer,” I told her. “Amber Lion is a wonderful antiques dealer, and they’re not far at all. Let me see if I can find a business card of theirs…” Like I didn’t know I had a collection in the side table right here in the foyer. I opened the drawer and made a show of looking.

“Nice to see you, Melissa,” Mrs. Fischer said. She’d been here less than four days into an unusually long two-week Senior Tours booking and had already struck up quite the friendship with my daughter, who had told me the older lady was “adorable.”

“This is my father, Mrs. Fischer!” Melissa gushed.

I quickly “found” the card for Amber Lion and turned abruptly back toward my guest. “Here it is!” I said a little too loudly. “Would you like me to call you a taxi?”

“Alison, you didn’t mention your husband,” Mrs. Fischer said, walking over to Steven, who reached out and actually kissed her hand. Boy, he was good.

“A pleasure to meet you,” he crooned.

“
Ex
-husband,” I said.

Mrs. Fischer must have caught the tone in my voice, because she smiled uncertainly, said, “Of course,” and walked out onto the front porch.

“You’ve become a good businesswoman, Alison,” Steven said, approaching me.

I held up a hand in warning. “Not another step until I know why you’re here,” I said.

My ex-husband had the nerve to look offended. “Don’t you think it’s possible I wanted to see my daughter after more than a year?” he asked.

It occurred to me that even low-fat fake butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.
Liquid
butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. “No,” I said. “I don’t think it’s possible.”

“Mom!” Melissa, like most children of divorce, probably held a hope that her parents would reconcile and wasn’t thrilled with my attitude. I’d have to put on a better front until Steven and I were out of her earshot.

“I’m sorry,” I said, more to my daughter than to The Swine. “I’m having a difficult day. Why have you come, Steven?”

Maxie poked her head through the ceiling and grinned hungrily at my ex. Normally, I might be disturbed by such an image, but the interest of a dead woman, especially one as, let’s say, difficult as Maxie could be, was just what The Swine deserved. I grinned back at her.

“I told you,” he answered, looking up at the spot to which I was smirking like a fool. “I wanted to see you and Melissa.”

“Of course. And where’s…What’s her name, again?” I knew perfectly well the name of the woman who had been—what do the lawyers call it?—the co-respondent in my divorce.

“Amee is still in California,” Steven answered. Amee with a double
ee
. Also her cup size, presumably. “We’re…spending some time apart.”

Melissa scowled a bit at the mention of Amee. She knew about her, but mostly in an intuitive fashion. I hadn’t explained the circumstances of the divorce other than to tell her that it was unequivocally not her fault in any way. But she knew that once Steven had started regularly mentioning the woman for whom he was traveling three thousand miles west, there had to be something more to this than Mommy and Daddy having a disagreement over his leaving the toilet seat up again.

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” I told him, although I’m sure my voice sounded about as sorry as if he’d told me he was giving me six million dollars in a trust fund for our daughter. “I’m sure you’ll work things out. Every relationship doesn’t end in a divorce like ours, you know.”

“A divorce like yours!” Maxie crowed, floating down a little and coming to rest halfway between the ceiling and the floor. “This is your ex?”

Melissa knew not to react to Maxie when a “civilian” like Steven was present, but her eyelids flickered a bit. She clearly saw that the reunion she’d been picturing was going somewhat differently than in her plans, and she offered to show Steven the room we were building for her in the attic. He did his best to feign interest, and let her pull him toward the main staircase by the hand. I followed, if for no reason than to make sure Steven didn’t give her a new Porsche once I was out of sight.

“It’s gonna have a flat-screen TV right on the wall, and a dock for my iPod touch, and it’s going to be painted green, and—”

“You decided on green?” I asked. “Last I heard it was going to be yellow.”

Melissa rolled her eyes. I could be
so
embarrassing. “Green is a much happier color, Mom.” No, not embarrassing—I was an idiot. That was it.

We arrived in the attic, and I noticed to my consternation that Steven wasn’t even breathing hard from the climb. He must have started exercising regularly, and all I could think was that the entire time we’d been together I’d never seen him do so much as a push-up.

He looked around the attic, having climbed the pull-down stairs (I was going to have to figure out another access point soon) and stood on the recently installed plywood floor. Granted, the space didn’t look like much yet; I’d just started with a few sheets of wallboard so insulation was visible almost everywhere, and the skylight was not yet cut into the roof. In short, it looked like an attic.

“This place is amazing,” Steven said, authenticity oozing out of his voice like the filling of an overstuffed Fluffernutter.

“It
will
be,” I answered. “See, there’s going to be a skylight…”

“No, I mean it, Ally,” my ex said. “I can’t believe how great it is you’re doing this for our daughter. And your handiwork is fantastic.”

Now I
knew
there was something he wanted from me. Steven had been adamant about my not doing any physical labor when we were married. He’d made me quit my job at a home-improvement superstore, then used a business connection to “find” me a desk job when I’d insisted on going back to work the year Melissa turned five. It had been the beginning of the end of our marriage. Well, that, and Amee.

“Okay,” I said. “Who are you, and what have you done with my ex-husband?”

Maxie wafted up from the plywood floor and hovered where she could get a really good look at The Swine. “He’s not bad,” she said. “How’d you get him to marry you? Were you pregnant?”

Melissa, knowing we shouldn’t acknowledge the ghosts with Steven in the room, gave her a sharp look. For that matter, so did I.

“I’m just here to see you and Liss, Ally,” my ex said, still doing his best to sell the tone in his voice. “I know that’s not what you would have expected, but I’m willing to wait you out until you trust me again.”

Something was definitely up. This was the exact attitude The Swine had used when he was trying to charm me, back when we first met.

“That might take a long time,” I told him. “Where are you staying while you’re here?”

He looked stumped, as if the question had never entered his mind before. “I sort of figured I’d stay…here,” he said.

“You did, huh?”

Melissa gave me a look that begged for leniency. I did my best to ignore it.

“Is that a problem?” Steven asked.

“It is if you think it’ll be like when we were married,” I said. “But if you want to stay here as a paying guest, I have a room that’s open. The going rate is a hundred and sixty-five dollars a night.”

The Swine raised his eyebrows, feigning either surprise or offense. It didn’t matter which. “For me?” he asked.

“You’re right. For you, a hundred and eighty-five.”

“Mom…”

Steven grinned, and reached into his back pocket for his wallet. “You
have
become a good businesswoman,” he said. “You take credit cards?”

I nodded. “I know better than to try to cash a check from you, after the last child-support one bounced…When was that, again?”

This time The Swine outright laughed. “Put that on the card, too, if you like,” he said. He handed it to me.

Maxie sat down the way the ghosts do, bending her body into a sitting position, but still hovering over the object upon which she was sitting, in this case a box of ceiling tiles. She happened to glance at the floor, where I’d laid out newspapers in anticipation of spreading joint compound into the gaps between drywall sheets. And suddenly, her eyes widened noticeably, and she drew in what would have been a breath in a living person.

“Oh my god,” she gasped. And then, she seemed to be crying. No tears fell—there’s no moisture in her—but she shook and shuddered, and closed her eyes. She repeated herself a number of times. I’d never seen her look like that before.

I handed Melissa her father’s credit card. “Go downstairs and ring him up, please,” I told her. Liss was looking at Maxie, and must have realized I wanted to be able to talk to her in private. She nodded, and took her father by the hand. “And charge him the full amount,” I added. “I’m going to check.”

Steven looked strangely at me but didn’t say anything as he let Melissa lead him back to the pull-down stairs and the lower floors. Just before he disappeared down the stairs, he gave me a look I knew, which said, “We’ll talk later.”

As soon as they were off the stairs, I walked over to the sobbing ghost. “Maxie,” I said, “what’s wrong?”

She couldn’t speak. She just pointed at the newspaper on the floor. So I knelt down and looked at the open page.

“ ‘Property Taxes Go up Four Percent?’” I asked. “What do you care about property taxes?”

Maxie shook her head violently and pointed again. Wrong article, I guessed.

“ ‘Human Remains Identified’?” I read. “Is that it?” Maxie nodded. I started to read.

The article began, “The remains of a man found at Seaside Heights two weeks ago have been identified as those of Robert Benicio, an Asbury Park native reported missing for more than two years. County detectives now believe Benicio was a victim of foul play.”

I looked at Maxie again. Her chest was still heaving, but less severely than before. “Did you know this Benicio guy?” I asked.

She gulped a few more times, and nodded.

“Was he a friend?”

Maxie finally made eye contact and seemed to contain her emotion. Her voice only wavered a little when she said, “He was my husband.”

Three

I don’t know how long I stood there, staring. After regaining the power of speech, I managed to squeak out, “Your husband?!”

Maxie looked at me darkly. “You’re surprised?”

“You’ve never even mentioned that you were married. When I asked if there was anyone you wanted me to contact…”

She tilted her head, an admission that perhaps she was being imprecise. “Okay, so maybe we weren’t exactly husband and wife anymore. Big Bob and I only got married for a couple of days.”