House of Ghosts

What readers say about
House of Ghosts…

A N
OVEL BY
L
AWRENCE
K
APLAN

W
ESTFIELD
P
RESS

Doylestown, PA

Copyright © 2009 by Lawrence Kaplan
http://www.joehendersondetective.com

ISBN: 978-0-9824117-0-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009927412

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Published in the United States by Westfield Press
An imprint of Winans Kuenstler Publishing, LLC
47 West Oakland Ave.

Doylestown, PA 18901 USA
(888) 816-1119
www.WKPublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

I WOULD LIKE TO THANK MY WIFE ANNE for her encouragement, keeping me on the path when I felt sorry for myself. Foster Winans, who some four years ago, said that my first manuscript shouldn’t go into the fireplace as kindling. Walt Kuenstler for being there in my trying time of need. Debra Leigh Scott for her many insights. And my kids Richard and Michelle who read and re-read numerous drafts.

For
IRENE LEDERER,
eyewitness to
American bombers
flying over Auschwitz.

JOSEPH ARTHUR HENDERSON limped into the kitchen of the tomb-quiet center hall colonial. It was near noon. He wouldn’t have forced himself off the couch in the den if it weren’t for the sledgehammer pounding his skull right behind the eyes. The couch had taken the place of his bed, using the stairs to the second floor killed his leg as the rationale, but had none for turning off the phones or closing the blinds during the day.

The renovated workspace was the product of the trembling hands searching through the “junk” drawer next to the stove. The headaches weren’t new. This one was worse than the others. Joe was sure the envelope with the last of the Percocet was in a plastic sugar bowl he brought back from Disney World when Emily was six. He guarded the two tablets as if they were the keys to eternal bliss, to be used for an emergency when the pain management specialist wouldn’t authorize more refills. The bastard said he’d have to learn to deal with it, and with the rehabilitation program the leg would get better. It didn’t and he stopped going.

With the help of a couple of buddies in the Department, the tired sixty-year old dwelling was ripped up a room at a time. A cop and his teacher wife never could have purchased a house in the exclusive Wychwood section of town if the place wasn’t one step away from being condemned.

With a hundred thousand dollars won in the lottery and the profit made from the sale of their starter Cape on the other side of town, the nervous couple signed the purchase agreement. “It’s a great deal and it’s the northside of Westfield,” the shark real estate agent told her prey as she tried to justify the obscene price. “The northside always commands the dollars.” The small New Jersey town, twenty-six miles south of Manhattan and an easy commute across the Hudson River to the caverns of Wall Street, had exploded with the NASDAQ made, pie-in-the-sky money of the 1990s. Yuppies overpaid for the right to tear down existing structures to build their McMansions.

Rosa
must have
moved it. With his heart racing, Joe opened the cabinet where the glasses were kept. Mickey’s face smirked back. He felt the coin envelope for his salvation, popped one of the white tablets into his mouth and chewed it as a piece of candy. Gagging on the acid chunks, he took a swig of coffee brewed the previous morning from a mug emblazoned with University of Arizona. The curdled cream added to the putrid taste occupying his mouth. He poured the remnants of the mug into the sink and shook his head, watching the thick goo seep between the rubber nibs of the garbage disposal. The symbolism was clear—his life was sliding down the drain and he didn’t give a damn.

At forty-nine, things were supposed to be different. The kid was going off to college and the time alone with Elaine, unencumbered with the demands of a hormone raging teenager, would provide the zip to rekindle a flagging relationship. He needed a couple more years with the Westfield P.D. and then he’d tell his chief of police to go to hell. At twenty-five years, his rank of detective lieutenant would provide enough for a comfortable retirement. It would be their time for some fun.

Then
a bullet blew away bone and muscle a few inches below his right knee. Surgeons contemplated amputation before agreeing to reconstruction using titanium rods and a new vascular procedure to restore blood flow. The surgery left him with a permanent disability, incessant pain, and a wife who didn’t understand how he
ever
got involved with the FBI in their attempt to catch a homicidal maniac.

Joe crossed the ten by ten space avoiding a stained glass Tiffany lamp swaged from the ceiling and settled into a white upholstered captain’s chair. He propped his leg on a footstool kept in the kitchen for that purpose.

Resting his head against the wall, he waited for the Class II narcotic to take effect. Dr. Headcase, the psychologist his wife forced him to see, said he had traumatic stress disorder. Zoloft would help the depression. Joe laughed at hearing the diagnosis. Getting shot wasn’t anything he hadn’t experienced before. The Yale Ph.D. blanched when Joe showed him the scar on his chest from a Vietcong’s AK-47 round. Joe, in his own estimation, was a complete screw up pure and simple.

A mad dash of scrambling thuds ricocheted down the staircase from the second floor. Roxy, Joe’s black Labrador, scratched at the front door.

“
Ho-la! Ho-la!
” sang out. Rosa, the Henderson’s long employed Puerto Rican cleaning lady, had let herself in. Roxy danced in circles as Rosa gave her a squeeze around her ample neck. “Joe, you home?”

“In the kitchen,” he moaned, realizing it was Friday.

Rosa, petite and owning skin the color of virgin olive oil, walked into the kitchen. Her white T-shirt and pink floral shorts were wet with perspiration. “It
so
hot.” She wiped her face with a tissue. “Fifteen days of ninety plus.”

Joe was unfazed: the central air was humming and the fridge was stocked with Budweiser. He hadn’t ventured outdoors for two days.

Roxy rambled to the kitchen’s threshold and gave Joe a look of disgust. The ninety-pound canine was lucky—Joe, in a burst of genius, installed a doggy door in the laundry room that opened to a fenced yard and purchased an automatic feed dispenser programmed for three times a day. She wagged her tail at Rosa, then scampered out of the room.

“A dog needs to be loved.” With her hands on her hips, she looked at the man who had employed her for eighteen years following the birth of Emily. Her role as full-time housekeeper/nanny evolved as Emily grew. She still came twice a week—Mondays and Fridays—but didn’t see the reason why. For over a year, Joe had lived in the house alone.

Joe’s orange golf shirt and blue jeans were stained with coffee. With a three-day growth of stubble, the one time fashion plate passed as one of the homeless that hung out at the train station. “Bad nights?” she asked.

“You don’t have to be polite,” Joe said without opening his eyes. “I’ve got a hangover the size of San Juan.”

Rosa didn’t require any explanation. A dozen twenty-ounce empty beer cans and a half bottle of Johnny Walker Black sat on the table. The bottle of Johnny Walker was unopened on her last visit. “Elaine call?” Rosa asked, knowing how her phone calls pushed Joe into that “dark place.”

“I had the pleasure of hearing her voice Monday night. She found a job, an apartment, and a new life,” he said with a wry smile.

When Elaine announced at the end of June of the previous year she was taking a sabbatical from her teaching job to work with mentally challenged kids on an Arizona Indian reservation, Joe was unashamedly relieved. Their marriage was in shambles. Maybe it was his never-ending funk. Maybe it was the beer and brown goods chasers. The Marlboro man and the overflowing ashtrays didn’t help. Besides, Emily was entering the University of Arizona as a freshman and needed to get her things out west. Elaine said she’d be away for ten months and hoped that he would use the time to figure out what he was going to do with the rest of his life.