The Skeleton Haunts a House (9 page)

“Not much in the way of a motive for anybody to kill her, is there?”

“It's early days yet.”

“Absolutely,” I said as confidently as I could, but his bones were still a bit loose. I switched tracks to ask about his classwork, and after a few minutes of discussion about some of the readings, I was relieved to see that his bones were back to their normal level of attachment.

It's kind of surprising that Sid can be afraid—he is dead, after all, and he can't be hurt in the usual sense because he doesn't have any nerves—but thinking about the carnival made him think about being separated from me and our family, and that scares him silly.

I
kept Sid company for a while as I did some actual work, stopping in time to go downstairs to see about starting dinner. Only Phil was way ahead of me, with homemade marinara sauce simmering on the stove and water boiling in readiness for pasta. “What do you need me to do?” I asked.

“You could set the table for five—Deborah just texted that she's coming over.”

“Sure thing,” I said, but I admit it rankled. Though I appreciated Phil cooking, I was used to choosing my own dinner, or at least being consulted about it. It seemed to me that it would serve Phil right if I announced that Madison and I were going out for dinner or ordering takeout. I'd have done it, too, if his sauce hadn't smelled so good.

“How long before Deborah gets here?” I asked once I'd finished.

“Ten minutes. I'm putting the pasta into the water now.”

I called up the stairs. “Sid, Madison, dinner in ten!”

They'd just come down when I heard Deborah's voice in the kitchen. A second later, I heard another voice—it was a man's and it wasn't Phil's.

Sid gave me a wide-eyed look, then ran for the old armoire that was his designated hidey-hole when unexpected company arrived. He was moving fast, but was still in plain sight when the door to the kitchen started to open. So I slid one of the dining room chairs to block the door from opening, wincing at the sound of wood slamming against wood.

“What the—?” Deborah said.

I turned and saw the armoire door shut behind Sid. “Sorry. Just moving things around.” I put back the chair, which was only a little worse for the wear.

Deborah came in, giving me a dirty look until I nodded at the armoire. “Come on in, Louis. My sister is finished rearranging the furniture.”

“Hi, Louis,” I said as he joined us. “I didn't realize you were coming over.”

“He showed up just as I was heading this way and said he has some questions for us,” Deborah said. “Dad forgot to mention dinner was almost ready. You may as well set another place at the table.”

“Thanks, but I don't want to intrude,” Louis said. “I can come back later.”

“Nonsense,” said my mother, carrying in a platter of garlic bread. “There's plenty, and your questions can wait until after you eat. There's one thing travel teaches you, and that's to grab every good meal you can because you don't know when you'll get another. Now come into the kitchen and get yourself a plate of spaghetti.”

He looked bemused, but obeyed. A few minutes later, we were all settled around the table, laughing at how confused Mom had been when an English grad student asked to borrow
a rubber. “All I could think of was that if I gave him one, I certainly wouldn't want it back. How was I supposed to know that ‘rubber' means eraser over there?”

Louis said, “It sounds as if you two had a fascinating trip, Dr. Thackery. I've never been out of the country myself.”

“Just call us Dab and Phil,” Phil said. “With three Dr. Thackerys in the room, we'll never know who you're talking to otherwise. Would you care for more spaghetti?”

“I'm fine, Phil, thank you.”

“Madison, how about you? Deborah? Georgia?”

“No thanks, Phil,” I said. “It was great, but I'm stuffed.”

“Georgia, can I ask you something?” Louis said.

“Do I need a lawyer present?” I asked, hoping I was kidding.

“Why do you call your father by his first name? Deborah doesn't, does she?”

I sighed, but of course Phil had heard.

“It's quite an amusing story,” Phil said. “Georgia accompanied me to a departmental meeting when she was small, and noticed that the other professors called me ‘Phil.' So when she needed help reaching something on the refreshment table, she called out, ‘Phil!' The departmental secretary—an able woman, but perhaps too set in her ways—reproved her, saying, ‘You shouldn't call him that. You should call him Father or Dad.' Georgia said, ‘You called him Phil.' ‘Yes, but I am his colleague.' Georgia looked her right in the eye and said, ‘Someday I'll be his colleague, too; ergo, I shall call him Phil.'” He chuckled, and repeated, “Ergo! Clearly she was destined for academia. I didn't have the heart to correct her, and it stuck.”

He chuckled again, Louis and Mom chuckled along, and Madison snickered. Deborah and I shared looks of disgust. In her case, it was probably because she'd heard the story more times than she could count—in my case, I could only imagine Louis wondering how that precocious colleague-to-be
had turned into a barely scraping by adjunct. If I was being completely truthful, I'd admit I wondered the same thing myself.

Once dinner was over and the table was cleared off, Louis got down to business. “We've been going through witness statements, trying to track down the people who were in McHades Hall when the murder was committed and there are some people we haven't been able to identify. I'm hoping that one of the rest of you saw something. Well, not you, Dab, since you weren't there.”

I saw Phil open his mouth to say he hadn't been there, either, but when I nudged him under the table, he shut it again.

“First off, of course, is Scooby-Doo. Unfortunately our lab guys haven't found any useful trace evidence in the costume so we're still trying to track him down.”

“What's the big deal with Dad's costume?” Deborah asked.

“It's pretty suggestive that it was abandoned.”

“Please,” she scoffed. “The guy who took it just didn't want to get caught with a stolen costume. I doubt he had anything to do with the murder.”

Louis gave her a sharp look. “Are you sure you don't know more about that costume than you've told me? And who was wearing it?”

Before Deborah could say anything, I said, “Deborah is looking out for me. I'm supposed to take the costume back this week, but if it's got something to do with the murder, you guys will need to keep it and I'm going to get stuck with a late fee.”

“Don't worry,” he said, “I'll call the costume place and take care of it. They won't charge you extra.”

“Great,” I said, hoping Deborah would let it alone. We really didn't want Louis getting suspicious. There were far too many holes in Phil's story, and if somebody started looking, it wouldn't take much effort to find them.

Louis went on. “We've got descriptions of half a dozen
other people who were seen at the haunt, but who left before they could be questioned.” He pulled out a folder and put a picture on the table in front of us. “One of the customers took a selfie while waiting in line and this guy photobombed her.”

“Do people realize how much of their life is documented in selfies?” Mom asked.

“It comes in handy for us. Do any of you recognize him?” The photo was of a girl in an angel costume next to one in a devil costume, and a guy wearing a hoodie was leering between them. “Deborah?”

“It rings no bells,” Deborah said, and Phil and I agreed, but Madison took a closer look. “I remember that guy. He tried to get me to meet up with him later. When I wouldn't break character, he said I could bite his neck anytime.”

“What?” I said, appalled.

“Don't worry, Mom. He was harmless.”

“Did Harmless give you a name?” Louis asked.

“Rob or Rod, I think. He said he works at the movie theater at the mall, and he could comp me tickets.”

Louis scribbled that down. “How about this guy?” He put down a picture of a man in a ninja costume, his face completely covered. The outfit struck me as ridiculous for a supposedly stealthy assassin. It had white trim on the sleeves, with a pair of hissing cobras encircling some sort of Japanese symbol on the chest.

Deborah shrugged. “I probably saw him, but do you know how many ninja we get?”

“Madison?”

“I remember a couple of ninja, but I think there was one with a design like that came in around that time. The trim really showed in the black lights in the chemistry lab scene. I didn't get a name, but he was a tough guy. Working hard not to be scared of anything, acting bored. Until the chainsaw. That's when he broke and ran. The chainsaw always gets them.”

He jotted that down and looked at the rest of us. We shrugged. I hadn't noticed a ninja, and of course Phil hadn't.

Louis had four more people to ask us about: a witch, two guys in jeans and T-shirts, and a cowboy. He had photos of all but the cowboy, thanks to other selfies and camera phones, but we couldn't help him any more.

“Can I take another look at the pictures?” I said, and when Louis handed them to me, I held them up high as if trying for better light. In reality, I was giving Sid a chance to see them. After I thought he would have had enough time, I shook my head and gave them back. “Sorry, nothing.”

“Have you come up with any reason why anybody would want to kill that girl?” Deborah asked.

“Investigations are proceeding.”

“Come on, Louis, it happened in my haunt. Are we talking serial killer or drug hit or what?”

“Maybe somebody wanted to shut down the haunt for some reason,” I said tentatively.

Louis raised an eyebrow. “Come again?”

“That building only belongs to the school as long as it's in use. If the haunt is closed, the building might revert to the McQuaid family.”

“That's an interesting thought,” he said. “I'll keep it in mind.” But he didn't take any notes.

Louis had driven Deborah over, so after he thanked my parents for dinner, he took her back home. As soon as they were gone, I announced, “It's safe to come out.”

“Ta-da!” Sid said, bounding out. “Good job on holding up the pictures for me to see, Georgia, but why did you give the cops our big lead?”

“It's not a lead, it's a theory. And I have to say that when I said it out loud, it sounded pretty improbable.”

“All theories are improbable before they're proven. Anyway, I'm sure I saw the ninja.”

“You did? What did he look like?”

From the angle of his skull, I could tell he'd have been rolling his eyes if he'd had any to roll. “Like a ninja. His face was covered.”

“His whole face?”

Sid couldn't close his nonexistent eyes to concentrate, so he had a habit of covering his eye sockets with his hands in such circumstances. “His eyes showed. And a little of his forehead. So I could tell he was Caucasian and his eyes were hazel. That's it.”

“But you're sure it was the same guy as in the picture.”

“It looked the same—snakes with a Chinese symbol between them.”

“Ninja are Japanese.”

“And I'm sure the costume company did dissertation-worthy research to make sure it was an historically accurate ninja suit symbol for this oh-so-authentic ninja suit.”

“Wow, that was an impressive amount of sarcasm.”

“I do what I can. Anyway, despite your giving away our best lead, we've got plenty of new material to work with. A ninja, a cowboy, a witch, a harmless creep, and two random guys! This is great!”

“How?” I asked. “What are we going to do with this information that the cops won't?”

“Come up with more theories!”

He and Madison both went to work on homework, while Mom and Phil started watching some of the vast number of TV shows stored on their DVR. I tried to tackle more work, but was too restless to get much accomplished.

I didn't want to burst Sid's bubble, but I was feeling ridiculous for trying to get involved in Kendall's murder. What could we could possibly do that the cops wouldn't do better? They had experience and forensics and could ask people questions without having to come up with excuses. I had Sid, who
was a computer whiz and a great spy, but who had some serious limits. And there was me—if assigning and grading essays and dealing with college students could solve a murder, I'd have it down cold, but otherwise . . .

Of course, Kendall had been a college student. Moreover she'd just started her sophomore year, meaning that many of her instructors had been adjuncts like me. Maybe there was something I could do the next day that the cops wouldn't think of.

M
y Tuesdays and Thursdays that semester were awkwardly scheduled. I had one class from eight to nine thirty, but my second wasn't until two. This time, however, I thought I could use that gap to my advantage.

After my first class, I headed to Mom's office. Luckily, she and Phil had errands to run and hadn't come to campus, so I had privacy. I was going to miss that luxury when my parents were back on campus full time. Despite their assurances that I could share with them, there was a big difference between borrowing space and having unlimited use of it.

My goal was to see what I could find out from my fellow adjuncts at Brandeis, a well-regarded private university in Waltham, Massachusetts. I'd never taught there, but I was hoping to find connections to exploit.

Before I'd left home, I'd asked Sid to search Kendall's social media for references to her classes, and when I checked my e-mail, I found that he'd sent a list of classes and instructor names.

With that in hand, I started looking through Brandeis's online faculty list. Kendall had been a business administration major, which made it trickier because I didn't have a lot of connections in business. Fortunately for me, Brandeis requires a writing seminar for all first-year students plus various core subjects, and those classes are mostly taught by adjuncts.

When I put the two lists together, I came up with the names of two people I could call.

I hit it lucky with my first target: Art Singer, a history adjunct I'd co-taught with as part of an experiment. He'd sent his classes' papers to my students for practice editing, and his classes had helped my composition students with research techniques. That gave me the excuse I needed, which was asking him for copies of the lesson plans we'd worked out—I couldn't claim that Byron had eaten my homework, but nobody argued with a hard disk crash.

Once Art had promised to send the files, we got down to every adjunct's stock-in-trade: gossip. We didn't just do it for fun, though of course that was part of it. It was to compare notes about working conditions and to find out which schools might have openings for adjuncts, and of course the gold ring, to see if anybody had tenure-track positions to fill. Neither of us had any hot news, but it did simplify moving the conversation toward Kendall Fitzroy's death. In fact, Art was the one to bring up the subject.

“I hear McQuaid is a dangerous place these days,” he said.

“Hmm? Oh, you mean that girl who was murdered? Technically she wasn't on campus—she was at a haunted house. And she wasn't a McQuaid student.”

“No, she was one of ours. Mine, in fact—I taught her last year in intro to American history.”

“Oh, Art, that's awful. I'm so sorry.”

“No, it's okay. I didn't know her well. Big class, and she wasn't exactly a model student. She was all about the partying.”

“Freshmen,” I said knowingly.

“You know the kind. Missed a bunch of classes, then came in right before exams to beg for extra credit assignments to make up for low test scores. I wouldn't bend, and I feel bad about it now.”

“It's not your fault. You couldn't have known.”

“Yeah, but still. Anyway, she managed to cram enough for the final that she squeaked through anyway.”

We talked a little while longer, but that was as much as I was going to get from him.

My luck wasn't as good with my next connection. She answered my call, but was on her way to class and wouldn't be available until after lunch. That left me time to fill, but fortunately, having an actual job has a way of taking care of that nasty problem. There were papers to grade, e-mails to respond to, assignments to plan, journals to read—the bread and butter of academia.

Just before noon, I headed for the Campus Deli, and got there in time to get my Greek salad and soda before the lunch rush started and scored a table by the window. I was indulging in reading a book purely for pleasure instead of for work when I saw Charles looking for a place to sit.

“Charles!” I said, waving. “Over here.”

“Georgia, what a lovely surprise.”

“Won't you join me?”

“I don't want to intrude, and it's a double imposition because Brownie is joining me.”

“He's welcome, too.”

“Wonderful,” he said, and took a seat across from me.

“I've been wanting to apologize for kicking you out of Phil's office without a warning.”

“Not at all,” he said. “You were more than gracious to allow me to stay as long as I did.”

“Have you found a new place?”

“I'll be bunking with Brownie. I was ferrying my belongings to my car when I encountered him yesterday, and when I explained that I'd had to relocate, he invited me to stay with him.”

“Then he knows about your living arrangements? I thought I was special.”

“There are very few I've trusted with that knowledge,” he said. “It's not that you are less trustworthy, but that Brownie is equally trustworthy.”

“I'll count that in his favor. Where are the two of you living?”

“He has a compact, but well-designed, trailer currently situated on Elm Street. I'll be well housed until after Halloween.”

“Elm Street? You mean you're living on the carnival lot?”

He nodded. “I'm anticipating learning more of the lingo during my stay there. It should prove to be quite an experience.”

“I bet it will be,” I said, trying to picture my natty friend picking his way past the discarded popcorn boxes and drink cups that infested every carnival lot I'd been on.

Brownie came over, and once we got the table arranged, I said, “How are you settling in to McQuaid?”

“It's always awkward picking up a class in midstream, but at least my predecessor left well-organized lesson plans.”

“That makes all the difference in the world,” I said. “Once I took over a composition class, and the guy had shifted his assignments around without updating the lesson plan. So I'm going by the plan, and it wasn't until three weeks in that one of my students told me they'd already done everything I was assigning. They'd just been handing in the same essays they'd handed in before, only they'd had time to correct the mistakes the other instructor had marked. Here I thought I had the most competent class ever.”

“At least you had a lesson plan to consult,” Charles said. “Once I had nothing but a stack of illegible index cards and
a copy of the textbook with sections highlighted. To make the experience complete, the topic was one I'd never studied before, let alone taught.”

That led to more war stories, each one funny in retrospect, though at the time I suspect we'd all indulged in words of the four-letter variety.

“One thing I've got to ask, Brownie,” I said. “How do you juggle being an academic with being a carny?”

“In terms of time or philosophy?”

“I was talking time, but you'll get full credit for either approach.”

“Time-wise, it's not as hard as you might think. The show shuts down after Halloween, and our winter quarters are outside Shrewsbury, which is near several colleges. Even when we go back on the road in April, we have a fairly stable route, and our usual stands are all in this part of New England. All I have to do is check with the colleges within commuting distance. It limits my options, but then again, if I can't find an adjunct job one semester, I just work more hours at the show.”

“You like doing both?”

“I love doing both,” he corrected me. “How about you?”

“Academia is home. Both my parents are English professors, and although they encouraged me to explore my possibilities, I decided this was the life for me early on. It hasn't turned out exactly the way I'd planned, but it's still good.”

“What about living in Pennycross? You don't get bored staying in one place?”

“I haven't been back all that long. I grew up here, but since I got my doctorate, Madison and I have moved around nearly as much as you have.”

“Madison is your partner?”

“You could call her that. I generally call her my daughter.”

He nodded, and I caught his glance at my left hand, which was free of a wedding band. I hadn't even been eligible for a
friendship ring for nearly a year, and snuck a peek at Brownie's hand in return. It was equally unadorned.

I was trying to decide if I wanted to take advantage of our mutually bare-fingered status when Charles looked at his watch and reminded Brownie that they had a meeting. So I went back to Mom's office to call my other Brandeis target.

Caroline Craig was an adjunct originally from Virginia, and she and I shared a love of pop culture, particularly comics. The cover story for her was asking if she had any recommendations for graphic novels I could use for a class I was proposing. To assuage my conscience, I did intend to suggest such a class to Dr. Eberhardt, but I didn't have any idea that he'd go for it. As far as I'd been able to gather, he thought “popular” and “culture” were diametrically opposed. At least I could pass the list on to Sid to add to his reading pleasure.

Once that was done, I brought up Kendall's death.

“That poor girl,” Caroline said. “It just broke my heart when I heard.”

“Did you know her?”

“I had her for university writing seminar last year, and I have to say I didn't think much of her. She didn't give two hoots about my class and was just barely scraping by with papers that were so bland I nearly dozed off reading them.”

“Don't tell me: My Mother/Grandmother/Aunt Is My Real-Life Hero, How Racial Prejudice Diminishes Us All, and Bullying is Bad.”

“Don't tell me you taught her, too!”

“I may as well have.”

“Anyway, the only reason she was in my section was because there was a boy she had her eye on.”

“Did he reciprocate?”

“Not right away, but she kept at him, bless her heart, and they finally went out partway through the semester. And here's the sweet thing. I think he steadied her down—she started
putting some real effort into her classwork for a change. She still wasn't a gifted writer, but she improved enough to bring herself up to a B-.”

“Good for her.”

“I didn't have her this semester, but she came by my office a couple of times just to say hello. She even apologized for being such a pain in the tail end. Of course, she really hadn't wronged me any—it was herself she was hurting by not doing the work—but I thought it was sweet. I just hate that she died so young, after she'd really started turning things around.”

I kept at it a little, but Caroline didn't know any more about Kendall's personal life.

Once I was off the phone, I checked my watch and saw there was no time to report back to Sid, so I grabbed my stuff and headed to class, figuring Sid wouldn't mind waiting.