Haunted Guest House Mystery 03-Old Haunts (37 page)

“Not at all,” The Swine responded. “I’m still going to do that; I think it’s my calling. But, you’ll recall, you told me you need me out of here tomorrow to accommodate the guests you have coming in. And I need to get back to California and take care of the things I had going on there.” Like Amee, for example. I wondered what he was telling her.

“So you’re going to be setting up a Wall Street business from Los Angeles?” I asked.

“Mission Beach, actually,” he said. “It’s near San Diego.”

San Diego. Of course. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with Lucy Simone, would it? She lives near San Diego.”

I continued to look away from him so I wouldn’t see the sly little bad-boy grin (Smile Number Thirty-Six). “Not specifically,” Steven said, and he sounded even a little embarrassed trying to sell that one to me. “But I do find her interesting, and I imagine we’ll be seeing each other once I get out there.”

“Because you’ll be living together?”

He let out his breath and made it sound like it was my fault. “I never could put one over on you, Alison.”

“Yeah, you could. At least once. What are you telling your daughter?” I asked.

“Melissa?”

“Do you have other daughters I don’t know about? Yes, Melissa. She’s gotten used to having you around and acting like a daddy. What have you told her?”

“I, um, figured I’d talk to you first,” he said. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, like a third-grade boy who’s been caught with a comic book stuck inside his arithmetic text.

“You mean, you figured you’d get me to tell her for you. Not this time, Steven. Do your own dirty work.” I poured myself a glass of lemonade and didn’t offer him one. That’d teach him.

He stood up straighter, as if called to attention. “I had no intention of slinking out of here without talking to Melissa,” he said. And he turned on the heel of his overpriced running shoe and left the kitchen with an air of moral superiority.

“Just one thing,” I said before he hit the door. He stopped and turned to face me. “Just tell me, once before you go, the real truth. Why did you come here in the first place?”

Steven’s face betrayed his thought process: First he looked like he wanted to be sly and tell me once again how he’d just wanted to see his wife—sorry, ex-wife—and daughter. Then his mouth dropped a little, and he said, “It was about the TV footage.”

I had no idea for a second what he was talking about. “The tape from
Down the Shore
that they shot here in April?” I asked. What the hell could
that
have to do with him?

He nodded. “I have a buddy who knows a guy who heard about this crazy show set in a haunted house. But the cops wouldn’t release the footage, and this guy thought it was a shame that the public wasn’t being allowed to see…”

“He thought you could sell it for a lot of money,” I corrected him.

Steven hung his head. “Yeah. And I figured if I came and just asked about it, you’d stonewall me. So I came to visit—I really did want to see Lissie—and along the way, well, it was obvious something was going on in this house.”

“I told you, it’s a marketing ploy.”

“Now who’s lying?” he asked. He didn’t give me time to answer. “Anyway, I think it’s probably best not to release the footage. I don’t want Melissa to have to deal with that kind of exposure.”

“Do you actually mean that?” I asked.

“Alison. How could you even ask me such a thing?” Shaking his head, The Swine turned and walked out of the room.

It’s how he manages to live with himself. Which, thankfully, was something I didn’t have to do anymore.

The bowling machine was broken, so Little Bob was giving me his full attention. But even after having been told the story three times, he still shook his head in disbelief. “You sure?” he asked. “Luther really killed Big Bob?” The idea just didn’t make any sense to him; you could see it in his eyes.

I would have put my hand on his shoulder if I could, but I’d have needed a step stool just to make an attempt. “I know, Little Bob,” I told him. “He had me fooled, too.”

Earlier, under stress (I had brought Jeannie with me), Lieutenant McElone had confirmed what I already knew about the drug bust gone sour two years earlier. Luther had murdered Wilson Meyers and stolen the drugs. Big Bob was the FBI informant (a detail I was keeping from the bikers in the bar), and the police had known he was alive, even that he was in Pennsylvania. They figured as long as he was safe, there was no reason to publicize the fact that he was alive, so the county’s medical examiner had been “persuaded” to issue a report saying the bones found under the boardwalk were those of Big Bob Benicio. They’d hoped putting out the wrong information would make the killer do something stupid, and it worked. He’d hired me.

But I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone for fear of endangering Big Bob even to this day. The drug buyers had never been found, and the Feds, although keeping an eye on the investigation into Big Bob’s “death,” had not wanted to make—and I apologize in advance—a federal case out of it. But now Luther was finding out just how much trouble he was in, and just how long he could expect to be in jail. Now he’d be charged with Wilson Meyers’s murder, not Big Bob’s. But nobody here had to know that.

“Luther killed Big Bob?” Little Bob asked again, and shook his head sadly.

Maxie, who had insisted on coming along to see some members of her old crowd even if they couldn’t see her, actually floated above our group in the Sprocket, looking wistfully at Little Bob and Rocco. She’d tried to talk me into telling them she was there, but I was very clear that if her new ability to travel around with me was going to work, the one rule would be that no one besides me would ever know she was present.

Tonight, no one but me and six spirits in the bar knew Maxie was here. Two of them had hit on her as we passed through the main room, and she had rejected them quickly and efficiently with the pronouncement that she didn’t “date dead guys.”

Paul had been a little taken aback when told about Maxie’s new freedom, but, after a day, he seemed actually happy for her. “I can’t say envy doesn’t come into play here,” he told her when we’d explained it to him, “but that doesn’t mean that maybe I won’t be able to do the same thing soon.”

“Absolutely,” I’d agreed, and I had to admit it seemed this latest episode had improved his motor skills to Maxie’s level, at least. This morning he had actually been juggling three oranges from a fruit basket Phyllis Coates had sent as “thanks for the great story” she was running on Big Bob’s murder, an “exclusive interview with the gumshoe who solved the case.” Maybe moving outside the property would develop differently for Paul. As I’d discovered since buying 123 Seafront, anything is possible. Even stuff you wish wasn’t.

“Is Luther going to jail?” Little Bob wanted to know, clearly hoping that if he weren’t, that would mean a mistake had been made and Luther really wasn’t guilty. Of course, the whole “trying to kill me” thing was pretty strong proof from my point of view, but it was possible I was biased.

“He’s already there,” I informed the huge man gently. Luther’s attorney had taken a look at all the evidence, the tape, and the fact that there were witnesses (all right, one witness) who had seen him come after me, and advised him to take a plea bargain offered by the FBI: a life sentence with the possibility of parole after twenty years. McElone had told me that was “a sweet deal” considering that he’d killed a man in cold blood, then later attempted to kill a woman (me) to cover it up. The fact that a federal informant had been lost to them as part of the same operation did not help Luther’s case, but again, they were letting the local officials be the public face of the prosecution. Various other charges regarding the false evidence given to police officers and all the drug offenses (only some of which could be proven after two years) had contributed to the plea deal. “He’ll be there for quite some time.”

Little Bob sighed and shook his head again.

“But that’s not why I came here tonight,” I told them. I held my beer mug high. “Here’s to Big Bob,” I said. Rocco, Little Bob and three other bikers who had known Bob Benicio raised their glasses to the ceiling. So did Maxie, although her glass was imaginary. “I never met him, but he sounds like he was a nice guy who didn’t deserve what he got. Let’s hope he found what he was looking for in the next world.”

“Wherever that is,” Maxie said. The other ghosts and I were the only ones who heard that.

Those of us who actually had physical glasses in our hands drank to Big Bob’s memory. Then I hugged Rocco and Little Bob—which was an experience, since his arms were so long I think they circled me and still touched his hands to his shoulders—and told the group I had to get back home.

“I have a special guest in my bed tonight,” I said, just to get them to cheer me out, although Little Bob looked a little shocked.

Melissa had asked to sleep in my room that night. It was one of the rare nights we had with nobody else in the house, and she had gotten used to a little more activity around the place. It seemed eerie when it was just the two of us.

“Dad already left,” she informed me when I got back from the Sprocket. “Lucy was going to the airport, and he decided it would be better if they flew out there together.”

She snuggled next to me. The air-conditioning seemed more efficient somehow when we were alone in the house, and we were under a comforter and a top sheet, but her feet, she took great glee in demonstrating, were icy cold. Ten-year-olds are strange beings.

“I know he can be disappointing sometimes, but he’s still your dad, and he always will be,” I told her.

“I’m not disappointed,” she said. “I pretty much expected it.”

“Sure you did.”

There was a long pause. “You know…I kind of spied on you for him.”

“What do you mean, you spied on me?” The light was out, but I looked at her anyway. I could sort of see the outline of her head, but not her expression.

“All that stuff about why you married him and how you wished he would still work to help people,” Melissa said. “Dad asked me what would make him more…what would make you like him better, so I asked you some stuff, and I told him what you said. He wanted to know about the TV stuff they filmed here, too. I didn’t know anything about that, but I told him what you said. I’m really sorry.”

I hugged my daughter close. “You don’t have to be sorry, honey. You wanted your dad to come back and make us a real family again. I understand.”

“We
are
a real family,” she told me. “But I wanted to see what it would be like if he lived with us again.”

“And what did you find out?” I asked.

She paused for a long time, thinking that over. “I really love Dad,” she said. “And he’s fun to be around. He always wants me to be happy, and he always acts like just another kid to play with. There’s just one thing.”

Melissa didn’t say anything after that, so I asked. “What thing?”

“I just wish he didn’t always end up being such a swine.”

The next morning, Melissa was already out of the room when I woke up. We’d have a whole day to ourselves, since the new Senior Plus guests wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow. I decided the best thing was to get some work done in the attic. I was in the middle of putting down a hardwood floor over the plywood that was there, and would stain that after it was down and prepped. But when I got out into the hallway, I was met with a crowd.

Melissa and Mom were right outside the bedroom door, looking surprised that I had emerged from there. “I was
wondering
where you were,” Mom said. “Melissa thought you were in the attic.”

“I don’t know why she’d think that,” I said.

“I called Grandma and she came over to take me for bagels,” Melissa said. “I thought you’d be upstairs. You
never
sleep this late.”

I would have asked exactly how late it was, but now I was embarrassed. Luckily I’d put on my work clothes before I left the bedroom, because behind my mother and daughter were Tony and Jeannie, standing in front of a blue tarpaulin that Tony had hung in front of his secret project. Maxie was hovering near the ceiling above Tony’s head. I started searching my mind for behavior of mine that might have triggered an intervention, but came up short.

“I was tired,” I said.

I walked toward Tony, who was wearing a grin so wide I was afraid it would meet at the back of his head. “I assume this means you’ve finished your fiendish plan,” I said to him.

“I have,” he admitted. The grin got a little wider.

“I don’t know what it is, either,” Melissa told me. “Tony said it was for my room, so it had to be my surprise, too.”

I have never had to question Tony Mandorisi on any home-improvement project, ever. The man is an unsung genius. So I had no trepidation when I told him, “Okay, then—let’s see it.”

“Stand back,” Jeannie warned.

I couldn’t imagine what might be behind that tarp. A staircase to the attic would take up far too much room and eat up almost the entire hallway. Fireman’s poles seemed impractical, as they really only work in one direction. I had not seen any construction going on outside, which would have required permits from the borough and cost far more than I could afford.

But Tony, I knew, wouldn’t let me down.

So it was with great anticipation that I pulled on the rope that Tony indicated, which let the tarp loose and dropped it to the floor. And with a little disappointment that I saw what was behind it.

“It’s…a closet,” I said.

“A closet!” Jeannie shouted. “You think my husband spent the last two days up here building you a
closet
?”

Melissa, of course, caught on much more quickly. “It’s an elevator!” she yelled, and launched herself at Tony for a hug, which he supplied.

But he shook his head. “It’s not exactly an elevator, Liss. It’s a dumbwaiter.”

Melissa looked up, and I knew she was confused. “Is that a joke, Tony?” she asked. “It doesn’t sound like a very nice name for something.”

“I can’t help what it’s called, Liss,” Tony answered. “But I think it’ll help you get up and down from your new room once it’s finished.”