Night of the Living Deed (39 page)

“What about Adam Morris?” I asked. “Did he really kill Terry Wright?”

“Yeah. They were having a relationship of some sort—it sounds like Morris was quite the ladies’ man—but when he realized he wasn’t getting the house, he called off their affair. Wright threatened to expose him, and he took a page from the mayor’s book. Figured if it had worked for her, it would work for him.”

“This is one crazy small town,” I told her.

McElone rolled her eyes a little. “Tell me about it,” she said.

“It was the cosmetics advice,” Paul said.

The next morning, with the light of day better illuminating the backyard of my “new” house, we were taking in the morning on a bench I’d restored near the back shed, near where I was hoping someday to have a greenhouse. Right now, I just wanted to sit.

I’d gotten back from the police station at about three in the morning, and hadn’t turned on the lights when I went to bed. On the way downstairs this morning, I’d been very careful to look only at the floor. Anything else would have been too depressing.

“When Mayor Bostero called last night, it was the cosmetics advice she offered, unsolicited, that gave her away,” he went on. I was cold in a light jacket, but Paul was wearing a pair of jeans and a gray t-shirt. Being dead, he didn’t seem to have to worry about the weather too much.

“That was it? She suggests latex ears, and you expose a killer?”

“That actually just triggered it. I really got it all at once,” he said. “She’d clearly been in the house before, certainly on the night we died, when she administered the Ambien to cover her tracks. She couldn’t have put that much Ambien in our drinks; we’d have noticed it. But the poison she used was a substance often found in nail polish remover, the kind of thing a beautician would have.”

I smiled at him. Paul really was a nice guy, and I was sorry I hadn’t known him when he was breathing. “I guess you really were a good detective after all,” I said.

“I want to talk to you about that.”

He didn’t get the chance, because Ned Barnes appeared from the back door of the house, and waved as he walked toward us. I checked my watch and, having delivered Melissa—reluctantly, on my part—to school, I knew he should have been there, as well.

“It’s my off period,” he explained when he reached us, although he thought I was alone. “I only have about ten minutes, but I wanted to talk to you about something in person.”

“It’s the deed, isn’t it?” I said.

Ned nodded. “I guess I’ve been pretty obvious with my obsession, haven’t I?”

“You could say that.”

“Well, just to put a rest to it, may I ask what you plan to do with the deed?”

I’d already made a few phone calls. “It has to be authenticated, of course, and sorry, they won’t accept a fourth-grade history teacher’s word. Right now it’s at the New Jersey Historical Society in Newark being examined. But it seems likely that the deed is real, and if it is, I’m going to donate the deed to the New Jersey State Museum.”

Ned raised his eyebrows. “Not the Smithsonian?”

“Nah. They have enough Washington stuff. Let New Jersey have a little of its own for a change.”

Ned smiled. “Not many people would give up the shot at four hundred thousand dollars.”

“Oh, I could sell it, but this way, I don’t have to worry about it, and I get a great big deduction on my taxes for a good number of years. That’ll come in handy while I try to get the guesthouse off the ground.”

He gave me the grin that had been my downfall since we’d met. “You’re an interesting person, Alison.”

“How interesting? Enough to overlook a few . . . miscalculations?”

Ned’s face lost its look of amusement. And I suddenly remembered Paul was watching, and turned to give him an irritated glance, but he was gone. “You mean that you thought I might be trying to kill you?” Ned asked. “That’s a lot to overlook.”

I looked at my shoes. “I didn’t
really
think that,” I mumbled. “I was under stress.”

“And I was acting like the Captain Ahab of Revolutionary War buffs,” he admitted. “But maybe we need to think about Melissa.”

“Melissa?” That had taken me by surprise. “What about Melissa?”

“I think maybe it’s better if her mom isn’t dating her history teacher,” he said. “She’s going to have a hard enough time as the Ghost Girl for a while.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “From what I could see, Ghost Girl is a pretty popular title around here. And she’s Melissa—she lets nothing stand in her way most of the time.”

We started walking back toward the driveway. “Nonetheless,” Ned went on, “I think given what you’ve just been through, and what you thought I was doing,
and
the fact that I’m your daughter’s teacher, maybe we need to put the brakes on. For a while.”

I hate it when men use logic. “For a while,” I agreed. “But there’s one thing I really need to ask.”

He stood straight and nodded. “Name it.”

“What is
Ned
short for?” I asked.

He looked at me strangely for a moment, and squinted a little, like he was trying to decide if I was real. “Edward,” he said. “Everybody knows that.”

“I didn’t. Where does the
N
come from?”

Ned smiled and shook his head.

I had barely waved good-bye to Ned when Paul appeared at my shoulder again.

 

 

“There’s something I want to ask. Let’s go inside, and—”

His abrupt manner had made me turn my head so fast, I almost put a crick in my neck. “Hold on there, Quick Draw!” I said. “I don’t want to go inside. I don’t want to look at all the damage we did, and the repairs I have to make. I realize it was the right thing to do, but after all the work I put in and all the expense I went through, I’m just not ready to face it. Okay? So ask what you want to ask out here.”

“No, really, Alison,” Paul said. “We’ll just go inside for a second, and—”

Before I could protest again, my cell phone rang: Mom was calling.

“I know you’re fine, but I just have to check in and make sure.” She managed to apologize while not actually apologizing.

I’d filled Mom in briefly last night, but McElone had been standing right next to me, so I hadn’t been able to fully explain to Mom what had happened.

“Mom, listen. There was something I didn’t tell you about last night.”

“What? Is Melissa okay?” Her voice immediately rose a half tone.

“Yes! Mom! Everybody’s fine. It’s just . . .” I turned away from Paul’s inquiring eyes. “I . . . I saw Dad, I think, last night. He sort of saved my life.”

There was a long silence. She must have been shocked.

“You mean . . . he didn’t tell you I sent him?” she asked.

Another long pause. This time,
I
was shocked.

“You sent him?”

“Of course! You were walking into such a dangerous situation all by yourself. So I got in touch with your father and told him to get down there.”

It was all crashing in on me at once. “What do you mean, you got in touch with him? You can talk to Dad whenever you want?”

“Well, not
whenever
. He sort of comes and goes. Luckily, he was around last night.”

Wait a minute . . . “How did you know where to send him?” I asked my mother. “I didn’t tell you where I was going.”

“I was tailing you in the Viper,” she said. “You didn’t think I’d just sit home and wait for a phone call, did you?”

Actually, I had thought exactly that.

I signed off with Mom after having promised to bring Melissa over for dinner that weekend (and having elicited a promise that she’d explain how to get in touch with Dad). My mind was reeling with all the new information it had to process. I didn’t think it could take much more.

But Paul, who had been waiting at a discreet distance while I spoke to Mom, had other ideas. He approached as soon as I put the phone back in my pocket. “Come on,” he said. “I have an idea I want to discuss with you. Just come on into the house, and—”

I almost stamped my foot, something I haven’t done since I was ten years old. “Did I not make myself clear?” I asked. “I’m not ready to go inside yet.”

Paul’s features softened, partially because of the sun coming out from behind a cloud and diluting his image. “Trust me,” he implored. “Just for a second.”

I gave in, as I usually do. After all, I’d have to see the mess again sooner or later, if just to assess the cost in materials, labor and time. I wondered if I could hire help on the job, and then wondered anew how the hell I’d pay for it.

Paul went straight through the door, of course, but I had to open the screen door and then the kitchen door to get inside. I stopped on the threshold and gathered myself; this wasn’t going to be easy.

“Come on, Alison.” I heard Paul’s voice from inside.

I stepped into the kitchen, where the walls hadn’t been too badly damaged, I remembered. It was probably the best place to start, but there was no getting around the fact that all the walls would have to come down and be replaced with drywall. “I don’t see why we had to talk inside,” I said to Paul.

And then I looked.

There wasn’t so much as a tiny crack in any of the plaster. Everything was exactly as it had been before we started flinging sledgehammers around. No—it was
better
. Small imperfections I hadn’t been able to sand out for fear of opening too large a hole had been smoothed over. The paint job was perfect.

Everything
was perfect in the kitchen.

I literally gasped. Then I looked at Paul, grinning and hovering around the ceiling, where my stencil work was perfectly intact. “What happened?” I asked.

“Come look inside.” He beamed.

A little unsteady on my feet, I made it into the dining room. Then the living room, the sitting room, the den. . . . Every wall was absolutely pristine. Not so much as a small bump.

Even the hallway wall, where the three-foot gaping crevasse had started all this trouble. Perfect.

“How did you
do
this?” I asked Paul. “The only guys who really know plaster are . . .”

“I made a few calls,” he said.

“So this is the place all the fuss was about.” Phyllis Coates had not seen the house since the renovations (by myself and a host of dead artists) were completed. So now, fully furnished and primped for a photo shoot two weeks after Halloween (the changing leaves making the outside shots even more appealing), it was looking as impressive as it ever would. Even the weather was cooperating, with bright mid-November afternoon sunshine flooding in through the windows.

Since Phyllis’s articles on the murders, the arrests of Adam Morris and Bridget Bostero, and the promotion of Anita McElone to detective sergeant had been picked up by some national wire services and posted on the Internet, my little guesthouse had achieved a certain amount of notoriety, and I was determined to exploit it for all it was worth.

I’d hired a photographer named Spud (he swore his mother gave him the name) to take brochure pictures, and Phyllis, happy to oblige her newest advertiser with a feature article on the house in an upcoming edition of the
Chronicle
, decided to stop by and see the place for herself.

“I might call the article ‘Haunted Guesthouse Open for Business,’ ” she joked. “Everybody’s saying there are ghosts here, after all.”

“What do
you
think?” I asked her.

“I’ve learned to believe only what I can see, and that only part of the time,” Phyllis answered.

“You’re a smart woman.”

While I showed her the house and Spud snapped away, Phyllis filled me in on the latest news: Both Mayor Bostero (well,
former
Mayor Bostero, now that she’d been forced to resign) and Adam Morris had been arraigned, and Adam had made a plea bargain that would keep him in jail for at least ten years. Bridget Bostero, as it turned out, was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and couldn’t make bail, which was fine with the judge, since he hadn’t authorized bail to begin with.