Read Online Haunted Guest House Mystery 03-Old Haunts by E. J. Copperman - Free Book Online Page A

immediately before you. The one you said showed up in your house as a ghost and told you she was murdered.”
    “Well, you arrested the killer, didn’t you? After the department had filed the two deaths away as suicides for a year.” I’ll admit it; that was designed just a little to get under McElone’s skin.
    “You know that happened before I got here,” she said. Good. It had worked.
    “Well, Maxie and Big Bob had a quick Vegas wedding—and got divorced a couple of days later. But Luther said that just before he disappeared,” I told her, “Big Bob had been planning to come to Harbor Haven to find Maxie, maybe reconcile with her. That’s why Luther said he came here, to see if he could find out something about Maxie’s death.”
    McElone, in full cop mode now, was already tapping something out on her computer keyboard, no doubt calling up the file on Maxie’s and Paul’s murders, or the dispatch she’d gotten from the county on Big Bob’s. “You don’t think the same killer who got Malone and—what was it, Harrison?—also killed Big Bob, do you?”
    “No, of course not.”
    I couldn’t see McElone’s computer screen, but she seemed very intent on it. “Well, the county doesn’t have much on your pal Big Bob. In fact, he barely registers as having existed.” She gave me a significant look. “I don’t suppose the ghost of his ex-wife told you what happened?” That was sarcasm—McElone doesn’t believe in the spirits in my house, and if I were her, I wouldn’t believe in them, either. But she’s seen enough at my guesthouse to know unusual things go on there. Or as she often puts it, “Your place is freaky.”
    “No, Maxie doesn’t know what happened,” I reported. “She hadn’t heard from Big Bob for a while before they both died.”
    “Uh-huh,” the lieutenant repeated.
    “Is there anything the county told you that can help? Anything that wasn’t in the papers?” I asked.
    “There isn’t much,” McElone admitted. “You have to keep in mind this is a two-year-old case, and nobody’s been looking for him for quite some time.”
    “And he was a biker,” I said, remembering what Luther had told me.
    McElone looked up sharply. “What is that supposed to mean?” she asked.
    “Luther said the cops weren’t going to care too much about one dead biker. They’d figure it was just some random violence between two transients who wouldn’t be missed.”
    She scowled. “ Luther is wrong,” she said. “The county cops and the Seaside Heights cops are both going over this thing with a fine-toothed comb. They can’t help it if nobody found the body for two years. There’s been complete decomposition; there’s been all sorts of environmental factors; there’s been enough time for the killer to move to Mars if he felt like it. The police aren’t indifferent, and we don’t choose which crimes we investigate, but the body’s been there two years.”
    I had gotten the very reaction I’d been hoping for, so I decided to use it. “And I’ll bet that when Big Bob disappeared two years ago, a code-red alert went out, and the state police were mobilized to search, right?”
    Now, I have received many a dismissive look from Lieutenant McElone in the short time I’ve known her. But this one clearly took the Dismissive Derby. “Maybe they would have,” she said, “if somebody had reported him missing.”
    That didn’t add up. “Nobody filed a missing-persons report on Bob Benicio two years ago?” I asked.
    McElone shook her head. “Nobody. The only reason they were able to identify him was because he’d been busted for possession four years prior to his death, and there were fingerprints and dental records on file from when he’d been in the service. So if your pal Luther was so concerned about his close personal friend, how come he never bothered to tell the cops that someone was missing?”
    That was a good question. I’d have to ask Luther tonight when he came by for a