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.” (And I believed she still went there occasionally—both of the ghosts would vanish for periods of time, and then return without explanation.) I pulled it out of the tote bag and handed it over to McElone.“I wish you’d worn gloves,” she said.I left it to her to get the second computer working properly.It took a lot less time to warm up than my weathered old laptop.McElone clicked quickly here and there and came up with Maxie’s inbox.“Aha,” she said quietly.“You see what I mean?” I knew, both because I’d looked and because the Dead Duo had told me, that Maxie had received at least eight threatening e-mails in the two weeks before she and Paul had died.“Yes,” McElone said.She consulted the file in front of her.“But the medical examiner’s report indicated they’d each taken at least twenty sleeping pills.You can’t exactly sneak a dosage that large into someone’s food or drink.”“Did anyone come asking when you notified their next of kin?” I asked.Paul had told me he had a brother in Toronto, and Maxie had mumbled something about it being none of my business.But they had no idea if anyone had come to claim their remains.“May I see your badge?” McElone asked.“My what?”“Your badge.You see, I only have to answer questions like that when they’re asked by my superiors in the police force or someone from the prosecutor’s office.So if you show me your badge, I’ll be happy to reply.”“There’s no need to be huffy about it,” I said, more to myself than to the detective.“Sure there is.” McElone scowled at me.“Look, Ms.Kerby—I’m still new here.I’ve only been a detective on this force for two months.You’re wasting my time over two suicides that have already been cleared by my predecessor, Detective Westmoreland, a man everyone in this building adored.”“Then you won’t reopen the case?” I asked.That was the outcome Paul had hoped would result from this meeting.He wouldn’t be pleased.McElone grunted.“I’ll do some looking based on the threatening e-mails, but I still don’t think it’s murder,” she said.“It doesn’t make sense,” I told her.“Why would these two people commit suicide?”McElone shrugged.“Lovers’ quarrel?”I practically spat.“Yeah, right!”Her eyes narrowed.“How well did you know these people?” she asked again.Oops.“Um, we never met,” I said.“I bought the house almost a year after they died.”“Uh-huh.And where were you living at that time?” Great.Paul sends me to open the investigation, and immediately I become the chief suspect.In a double suicide.“In Red Bank.I was just filing for divorce then.”“I’m sorry to hear it,” she said in a voice that indicated she couldn’t care less.I stood up and reached a hand out for my laptop.“Well, I guess I’ve been wasting your time,” I said.McElone did not offer the computers back.“I don’t know that yet,” she said.“Until I have this figured out, I’m going to need to keep these.”I blanched.I didn’t care what she did with Maxie’s laptop, but I relied on my old dinosaur.“That’s not possible,” I sputtered.“Sure it is,” McElone answered.“Watch how easy it is for me not to give it back.” She slipped the two computers into her desk drawer and wrote me out a receipt.“What’s the matter?” I asked her.“Doesn’t the department give you your own computer?”“You’ve given me evidence that someone is making terroristic threats against you,” the detective responded.“Until I determine whether or not a crime has been committed, those computers are staying.”“And how long will that take?”“It’s a small town,” McElone said.“We don’t get that much crime during the off-season.Shouldn’t take more than three or four days.”“Days? My whole life is on that computer!” Suddenly, the separation from my ancient notebook computer seemed horrifying.Okay, so I don’t get along with technology, but that doesn’t mean I want to live without it.I couldn’t get along with The Swine, and.Bad example.“We have to follow up,” McElone said, her voice never showing a hint of emotion.The woman could probably watch Old Yeller and not tear up.“I promise I’ll call you the minute you can pick it up.”In the end, I had no choice.But then, that was becoming my fallback position on just about everything.I went to pick up Melissa from school.Maybe I could check my e-mail on her cell phone.ElevenPaul had given me explicit instructions to come back to the house and report on my meeting with the police, but I didn’t.Instead, I picked Melissa up at school and tried to linger a few minutes, hoping to run into Mr.Barnes.No such luck, but Melissa was in a mood to “work on the house,” as she said, and she whined and begged to help enough that I relented quickly.I didn’t want my daughter anywhere near the two spirits in the guesthouse, particularly Maxie, but what could I do? It was where we lived, and no matter how many times she could go play at Wendy’s or do homework at another friend’s house, I really did miss having Melissa pitch in with the renovations (plus, I feel the need to pass on to her the skills Dad taught me).It’s not like I could I tell her I’d spent most of my mornings repairing damage done during the night by dead people.And anyway, I didn’t want her to be afraid in her own house.Though if there was one thing I’d learned since my knock on the head, it’s that you should be afraid of ghosts.They’re a colossal pain in the butt.We were working in the dining room, a large, long space with ornate moldings around the entrance and along the ceiling.Today’s jobs were to skillfully fill in cracks in the plaster (me), and carefully scrape the paint off the window frames to prepare them for staining later (Melissa, armed with Dad’s paint scraper but no chemical stripper).I didn’t see Paul when we entered the house, which was odd—I figured he’d be waiting breathlessly (quite literally) for news of my meeting with Detective McElone.But Maxie wandered in from the kitchen, looking bored, or pretending to be bored.Until she started staring directly at my daughter.The way Maxie was looking at Melissa was creepier than anything I’d seen since the bucket made its impact with my cranium.And that’s saying something.“Don’t do that window first,” I told Melissa.“Do this one, closer to me
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