Haunted House Murder Read online

  Hayley stared at the Crock-Pot. “Mona, that’s not going to be fully cooked for another forty-five minutes.”

  “I couldn’t wait,” Mona said, slurping the broth off a large spoon. “What can I say? I’m seven months pregnant. I get hungry.”

  “Mom, look! I’m the Pink Power Ranger!” Gemma squealed.

  Hayley turned to her daughter who was jumping around the kitchen striking superhero poses. “You look awesome, sweetheart!”

  Mona suddenly set the empty bowl on the counter and snatched the brown paper sack out of Hayley’s hands. “What’s in here?”

  She rummaged around in the bag and her face lit up. “Candy!”

  “That’s for the trick-or-treaters, Mona,” Hayley admonished.

  Mona was already tearing open a bite-size Snickers bar. “That’s two whole days away. I’ll replace whatever I eat. I’m eating for two, you know!”

  “Shouldn’t you be eating something a little more healthy, for the baby’s sake?” Hayley quietly suggested.

  Mona gave her a dirty look, and in an act of defiance, popped the Snickers into her mouth whole, and then began unwrapping a Three Musketeers bar.

  Hayley decided that the best course of action was to just let Mona do what she wanted. She turned to Gemma. “Where’s your brother?”

  “Upstairs playing video games,” Gemma said, pulling the helmet off her head. “Dad says we can watch an old scary movie tonight.”

  “What kind of scary movie?” Hayley asked suspiciously.

  “Psycho!” Gemma shouted before her father could stop her.

  Hayley spun around to Danny, who had guilt written all over his face. “Are you kidding me?”

  “It’s a film classic,” Danny argued, unconvincingly.

  “It’s also entirely inappropriate for children their ages,” Hayley said.

  “It’s in black and white. I mean come on, how scary can it be?” Mona said, reaching into the bag for another piece of candy.

  Hayley snatched the bag out of Mona’s hand. “No more candy until you take my side.”

  Mona got the message. “I got that Lindsay Lohan Disney movie, Herbie: Fully Loaded, at home on DVD you can borrow.”

  “It’s Halloween!” Danny groused.

  Hayley shook her head and turned back to Mona. “He does this every year. He gets the kids all hepped up on scary movies, and then right before they go to bed, he tells them how the last owner of the house next door deserted it because he was frightened off by evil spirits! And then they can’t get to sleep because he’s got them so terror-stricken! That’s not responsible parenting!”

  “It’s true! They say he ran screaming out of the house in the middle of the night a few years back and never returned and no one has seen him since!” Gemma bellowed. “I know because Daddy said so!”

  “It’s not true, Gemma. He just moved away, that’s all,” Hayley said firmly.

  “Then why has no one ever bought the house since? I’ll tell you why. It’s because . . .” Danny said, before taking Gemma by the hand and smiling at her. “Say it with me . . .”

  Danny and Gemma both screamed, “It’s haunted!”

  “Help me out here, Mona, please,” Hayley said.

  Mona made sure she had her tiny box of Milk Duds open and in her mouth before she responded. “I heard the same thing.”

  “You’re all impossible!” Hayley said. She whipped open her cupboards and removed four dinner plates to set the table, passing by Danny. “When they’re seeing ghosts in their rooms tonight, you’re going to deal with it, not me!”

  Hayley had always been the family skeptic when it came to creepy, spine-tingling ghost stories that supposedly had happened over the years in Bar Harbor, but she had no idea that this time, she might be the one proven wrong.

  Dead wrong.

  Chapter Two

  The following morning as Hayley fed the kids breakfast before school, Danny slammed through the back door, having just finished his overnight shift at the Big Apple.

  “You are not going to believe this one!” Danny bellowed before stopping at the counter and picking up a piece of bacon off a plate she was about to serve the kids, who sat at the kitchen table gorging on blueberry pancakes.

  “Try me,” Hayley said, pouring orange juice from a carton into two glasses and setting them down in front of Gemma and Dustin.

  “Edna Poole stopped into the store around five this morning to buy a carton of cigarettes. . . .”

  “She did?” Hayley gasped. “I heard she just beat lung cancer. Why on earth would she still be smoking?”

  “That’s not the big news, sweet pea.” Danny sighed, slightly annoyed. “Edna told me she heard someone just bought the house next door.”

  Dustin shoveled a forkful of pancakes into his mouth, but still decided to speak despite Hayley’s constant pleas to never talk with his mouth full. “You mean the haunted house?”

  “Yep, that’s the one,” Danny confirmed.

  “It’s not haunted!” Hayley said sharply, glaring at Danny.

  “Says you,” Danny scoffed, peering out the kitchen window over at the house next door. “Man, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to move into that House of Horrors!”

  “Danny!” Hayley screamed.

  “What if they bring in a priest to perform an exorcism and they get rid of the ghosts, but then the ghosts decide to come over here and move into our house?” Gemma wailed, suddenly frightened.

  “How would you know anything about priests and exorcisms?” Hayley asked Gemma, who was now busy sucking down her juice.

  Gemma didn’t see her father pleading with his eyes for her not to expose him until it was too late. “He showed us the movie The Exorcist when you were down in Florida visiting Nana last month.”

  Hayley spun around to Danny, eyes blazing. “He did what?”

  “That girl with the funny voice and spinning head who threw up that green stuff was awesome!” Dustin said excitedly.

  Hayley shook her head. “Danny, how could you . . . ?”

  He knew his defense was weak, but he valiantly stood his ground. “It’s a classic.”

  “Is this what it’s come to? I can’t even leave you alone with the kids anymore?” Hayley said, shaking her head.

  Danny decided it was best not to go there so he just skated past it and turned to Gemma. “Don’t worry, baby girl, Daddy will protect you from any ghosts. You know why? Because I’m a bad-ass Ghostbuster!”

  “Watch your language,” Hayley scolded, before checking the clock on the stove. “Hurry up, you guys, the school bus is going to be here any minute.”

  Gemma and Dustin picked up their plates and set them in the sink as they were trained to do, and then grabbed their coats and knapsacks and headed out the front door to wait at the corner.

  Danny, who was fully aware he was in the doghouse, grabbed another piece of bacon, and dashed down the hall for the stairs. “I’m beat, babe. I need some shut-eye after that long shift. I’ll clean up after the kids later.”

  She knew he wouldn’t, so she began scraping the remnants of the kids’ breakfast off their plates and into the garbage can with a fork. When she went to put the carton of orange juice back in the refrigerator, she suddenly spotted Dustin’s brown bag lunch that she had prepared the night before on the top shelf. Gemma always purchased her lunch through the school lunch program, but Dustin, who was a far pickier eater, preferred to know exactly what he was going to eat every day. Hayley had forgotten to give it to him when she rushed him out the door.

  She snatched the sack and dashed out the door to the street where the kids were still waiting for the school bus. They weren’t alone. A man in his late thirties, tall and lanky, with a receding hairline and a rather odd-shaped nose, almost more like a beak, and dark, almost coal black eyes, stood nearby with two children who were roughly Gemma’s and Dustin’s ages. The boy appeared to be about twelve or thirteen years old, pudgy, red-faced, with angry eyes, like he was having a
perpetual tantrum, and the girl, a bit younger, perhaps around nine, was rail thin, with flat black hair and a pale, almost ghostly complexion. What added to her mystique was that she was dressed all in black, unlike most girls her age who usually gravitated toward bright colors.

  “Dustin, you forgot your lunch,” Hayley said, distracted by the strangers at the bus stop.

  “Oh, thanks,” Dustin said, grabbing the bag and ripping it open to inspect the items his mother had served him. “An apple, really?”

  “I told you, I want you eating a piece of fruit at least four times a week, so don’t you dare trade it for a chocolate bar. Do you hear me?” Hayley warned.

  “Like anybody would take that deal,” Dustin mumbled.

  The man noticed her staring and looked away, but that didn’t deter Hayley from bouncing over to him. “Hello, are you new to the neighborhood?”

  Unable to avoid her any longer, the man gave her a gruff nod. “Yes.”

  The house next door.

  A family had moved in.

  “My goodness, we just heard someone had bought the house next to us, but when did you have time to move in? During the dead of night?”

  Gemma chuckled and Hayley quickly realized her poor choice of words and quickly tried to correct herself. “I mean, I haven’t seen any moving trucks.”

  He didn’t answer her question. It was clear he had no interest in having a conversation, but that wasn’t going to stop Hayley from trying again with his two children. “Hi, I’m Hayley, and this is my daughter, Gemma, and my son, Dustin. We’re going to be your new neighbors. What are your names?”

  The kids were slightly more responsive than their father.

  The boy spoke for both of them with his high-pitched, grating voice that hopefully would be corrected when puberty hit. “I’m Casper and this is my sister, Carrie.”

  “Nice to meet you both,” Hayley said, wishing her kids would do more than just stand there staring at these rather strange-acting kids.

  Hayley put out her hand to the father. “Hayley Powell.”

  He was cornered and had no choice but to engage with her. “Damien. Damien Salinger.”

  “Damien, like the kid in that movie The Omen!” Dustin squealed.

  Hayley was ready to kill Danny. The Omen? He showed the kids The Omen, too?

  The father glowered at Dustin. “I never saw it.”

  “Well, let me be the first to welcome you all to the neighborhood!” Hayley chirped just as the school bus pulled up to the curb and all four kids piled in. “Have a good day! Nice to meet you, Casper and Carrie.”

  As the bus pulled away, Hayley turned back to chitchat with Damien, but he was already walking into his house, slamming the door hard behind him.

  Hayley then hurried back to her own house and finished cleaning up the kitchen before driving to work. It was a busy day and there was a lot of news to cover, from a controversial new state regulation about the minimum size of wild oysters that could be harvested, to news that the heavily traveled Goose Cove Road in Trenton would be closed for a week for clean-up and repair work on the shoulders and drainage ditches. Hayley had briefly inquired about the family that had moved in next door to her, but her boss, Sal, and all the reporters working in the office that day had no clue about them. Despite the rather cold shoulder she had received from the patriarch, Damien, Hayley was determined to make an effort and befriend her new neighbors, so after work she stopped in the Shop ’n Save, picked up some ingredients, and went home to make the delicious-sounding Creamy Cheese Fall Vegetable Casserole that she had read about in one of Hattie Jenkins’s columns.

  When her oven timer rang announcing the casserole was fully cooked just after seven o’clock, she let it cool on the stovetop for about fifteen minutes before wrapping it in tinfoil and walking it next door. She knew that someone was home because a light downstairs was on even though the rest of the house was dark. She rang the bell and waited. After about a minute, she rang it again. Still no answer. She tried one more time and then turned around to go back to her house and write a note to leave with the casserole when the front door finally creaked open, and a rather striking woman in her early thirties, with lush blond hair, an hourglass figure, and perhaps a tad too much makeup, stood in the threshold. She wore a beautiful print sundress that was partially hidden by an apron that had a saying printed across it that read I’M A MOM. WHAT’S YOUR SUPERPOWER?

  “Oh, that’s cute.” Hayley chuckled.

  “What?” the woman asked, a bit confused.

  “Your apron.”

  She woman stared down at it as if she was reading it for the first time, and then she looked back up at Hayley, and almost as an afterthought, remembered to plaster a warm smile on her face.

  “Thank you for noticing.”

  The woman’s behavior struck Hayley as a bit peculiar, but she decided to brush right past it and stick out her hand while balancing the casserole dish in the palm of her other hand with an oven mitt. “I’m Hayley Powell. I live next door. I met your husband and two children this morning while they were waiting for the school bus.”

  Hayley suddenly realized that she still had her hand out and the woman had yet to take it. She just stared at her blankly. Then, as the woman processed that she should probably do something to relieve the awkwardness, the woman took Hayley’s hand and shook it limply before slowly, almost robotically, withdrawing it.

  “I’m Rosemary,” she said flatly.

  She reminded Hayley of a Stepford Wife from another movie she was certain Danny had already shown the kids.

  “What can I help you with, Hayley?”

  “Well, I know you just moved in, and that it can be stressful unpacking boxes and pushing furniture around while feeding and caring for two young children, so I thought you might appreciate a casserole.”

  “We already ate,” she said, eyeing the casserole like she had never seen one before.

  “Oh, okay,” Hayley said, grimacing slightly. “Well, I can attest to the fact that this casserole tastes even better warmed up.”

  Rosemary still made no move to take the casserole from Hayley. “What kind of casserole is it?”

  Now Hayley was on more solid ground. She loved talking about food. “It’s a Creamy Cheese Fall Vegetable Casserole. My kids love it! Pretty much the only way I can get them to eat vegetables is when they’re smothered in cheese! I put in carrots, sweet potato, butternut squash, celery . . .”

  She didn’t seem to care. “Is there any dairy?”

  Hayley was deflated and stopped ticking off all the yummy vegetables in her casserole. “Uh, yes, the recipe requires some cream cheese, which is why it’s called Creamy Cheese Fall Vegetable—”

  Rosemary didn’t let her finish. “What else?”

  Hayley withdrew her friendly offering, knowing there was little chance at this point of this woman ever accepting her kind gesture. “Some shredded Parmesan and . . . three cups of milk.”

  “Casper is lactose intolerant.”

  “I see. Well, maybe your daughter will like it.”

  “She refuses to consume any dairy out of respect for her brother.”

  “That’s very sweet . . . Maybe you and your husband might—?”

  “We make it a habit of banning all dairy in our house.”

  “Okay, then, I will just take this home with me then,” Hayley said. “You have a good evening.”

  Rosemary, who seemed to be two steps behind in the conversation, finally had the awareness to part with a curt “Thank you.”

  And then she slammed the door in Hayley’s face.

  Hayley looked down at her rejected casserole and decided that since she had already prepared the kids a spaghetti pie, there was only one thing left for her to do: Drop her scrumptious Creamy Cheese Fall Vegetable Casserole off at Mona’s house where it would be properly appreciated.

  Of course Mona was elated over Hayley’s casserole and declared she was going to hide it from her deadbeat husband, Dennis,
and her greedy, marauding kids. She more than made up for the chilly reception Hayley had received from Rosemary Salinger.

  And when Danny heard about Hayley’s two run-ins with the new neighbors, he came to the simple yet appropriate conclusion that the Addams Family had just moved in next door.

  Chapter Three

  The Powell family candy haul for Halloween 2009 was particularly successful. Mostly because, in Danny’s opinion, he and Hayley had dressed up too to escort their kids door to door to all the houses in the neighborhood. It was something about an entire family decked out in costumes that nudged people to give away more of their stash. Maybe it was the above and beyond effort put into the trick-or-treating tradition. Most parents would just throw on a coat and simply chaperone their children. But not Danny Powell. No, this was as much fun for him as it was for the kids. His Russell Crowe-inspired gladiator costume was impressive, and Hayley had to admit to herself that it was also kind of sexy. A lot of the mothers who opened the door after Dustin rang the bell were flabbergasted and a bit flustered at the sight of Danny’s muscled arms and sturdy legs. Danny’s body armor and leather tunic were a bit itchy, however, and he had to keep scratching himself with his plastic sword. It was a bit colder than had been forecast so Hayley had to wear an overcoat over her white Marilyn Monroe dress that she had tailored specifically to look like the one Marilyn wore in The Seven Year Itch in that famous scene where she stands over a subway grate and the skirt blows up as a train shoots by below. The wind in Bar Harbor was also gusty on this Halloween night, and more than once Hayley had to hold her blond wig down tight so it didn’t fly away. Gemma and Dustin both looked adorable in their Power Ranger and Jack Sparrow costumes respectively, and at this point, with only a few houses to go, their plastic orange pumpkins were overflowing with candy as was Danny’s. Hayley had tried to talk him out of participating in the actual trick-or-treating, but Danny insisted that if they went to the trouble of dressing up, they should be rewarded for it. Hayley finally was too tired to argue the point further, and so Danny beamed excitedly as they hit their last house on Ledgelawn Avenue, and he got not one, not two, but three packages of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.