Chance of a Ghost (35 page)

By the time I picked Melissa up from the bowling party,
Maxie and I had hashed, argued, questioned, puzzled and dissected the idea of the grumpy ghost’s knowing my name. She had said I was overemphasizing it (I believe her words included the phrase “drama queen”), and that the old spirit had simply heard Josh Kaplan use my name and repeated it for effect. But I knew how it felt, and it
felt
like he was threatening everything I held at all dear in my life, and possibly to all life everywhere.

Okay, maybe “drama duchess,” but that was as far as I was willing to go.

Maxie was also appalled because after I’d texted Josh Kaplan my number, he’d called me almost immediately, and we’d made plans to go out the following evening (he closed the store early on Sundays). He’d pick me up at the guesthouse and we’d “discuss my memoir,” which I was starting to think could become code for something else.

The one thing Maxie and I had agreed upon was not to
mention the angry ghost to Melissa, who could put on quite a show of being self-possessed but was in reality still only ten years old. There had been no argument about that.

But I sure as hell was going to tell Paul the first chance I got.

Despite having complained about going to Justin Krenshaw’s birthday bowling party, Melissa seemed reluctant to get into the Volvo to come home. This was partially understandable, as all her friends were standing in the frigid parking lot laughing and gabbing and also because the Volvo’s heating system was roughly as efficient as the United States Congress, which is to say it made a lot of noise but got very little done.

But Liss’s hesitation turned out to be less about hanging around and more about a possible sleepover at Janine’s house that she hadn’t known about until the sixth frame of the second game. “They asked me, but I’m not sure they really want me to go,” she said. “Should I say no?” I should point out that at no time was permission to go to a sleepover that night with no prior notice an issue. I’m a fun mom.

“You have to go,” Maxie suggested. “If you don’t, they’ll talk about you.”

“Go, but only if you want to,” I countered as quickly as I could. “Don’t worry about why you were invited; the point is, you were invited. They wouldn’t ask if they didn’t want you to come.”

“Hmmph,” Maxie snorted.

In the end, of course, it was decided that Liss would spend the night at Janine’s, which had been hastily arranged but okayed by Janine’s mother, Kate. But first we had to go back to the house so that she could gather her sleepover equipment and I could check on my guests. I lit a fire in the fireplace in the den to try to heat the house a little and went to greet the Hendersons.

As advertised, now that I’d delivered Morgan’s hearing
aids, he was a changed man. He still seemed to have to strain a little to hear conversation, but his demeanor was much less dour, and he could converse almost seamlessly. I wished I had known the devices had been on their way from the beginning, but Nan told me that Morgan was still vain about the hearing aids and hadn’t wanted to mention what was in the box at all.

They had just returned from a long trip to the site of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping near Princeton, almost entirely on the other side of the state, and so were especially tired. I offered to order them in something to eat, but they said after a short rest stop, they intended to revisit one of the local restaurants they’d especially enjoyed. It was one that pays me a percentage for sending guests their way (with a ten percent discount for the diners), so I didn’t argue too strenuously against their plan.

I did, however, resolve to ask Morgan for advice on my investigation into Lawrence’s death as soon as there was a natural opening in our conversation. You can’t rush these things when you’re the innkeeper, I thought.

Melissa was upstairs assembling her overnight bag, with her “roommate” Maxie offering advice, when Paul bled through the kitchen wall (and the stove) for an update. I told him about the grumpy ghost first, and he looked especially concerned.

“You felt that he knew you somehow?” he asked, although I’d made that quite clear in the telling.

I nodded. “And I didn’t like the way it felt. It wasn’t like he was planning a surprise party for my next birthday.”

Paul did something the ghosts do, which is similar to taking a deep breath but it sounds different because no air is actually involved in the process. It sounds more like a vacuum cleaner on a very low power setting.

“I think it’s significant,” he said. “But I don’t understand it yet. Perhaps I can try to track down this spirit’s
consciousness. I don’t have a name to work with, but I have an area to check. Let me try to contact someone later tonight, when things will be quiet.”

I nodded my agreement. “In the meantime, what else can we do? I feel like I’m pulled in two directions here with the Lawrence thing and the search for my father. I don’t know what to do first, and you’re good at that.” Always flatter a man; it brings out his best.

Once again, it did not fail. “You can divide your time. Obviously, your priority is finding out what is going on with your father,” Paul began. “If I am unable to raise him or the spirit you saw at the paint store today, make sure that you keep in touch with the young man you met at the store.”

I blushed but nodded coolly. All would have been fine if Maxie had not chosen that moment to slither down out of the ceiling. “Melissa says she’ll be ready to go in five minutes,” she told me in my role as chauffeur. Then she turned toward Paul. “So, she told you about the guy who asked her out today?”

I had, in fact, left that particular detail out of my investigation summary. Paul gets a trifle testy on those rare occasions I’m shown any interest by a man. He raised an eyebrow and his lip curled just a little.

“He asked you out?” he said, his Canadian cadence not exactly betraying upset so much as irritation. “Why didn’t you mention that before?”

Maxie grinned at me. Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire cat could not have done so with more enthusiasm. Unfortunately, the grin did not mean the rest of Maxie was disappearing. She existed, I thought, simply to watch me be uncomfortable.

“I didn’t mention it because it didn’t seem relevant,” I told Paul. “I said I’d be seeing Josh again and that I would ask him about my father. Both those things are true. If we happen to be eating dinner while I’m seeing him and asking him about my father, I don’t see what difference it makes.”

“It clouds the report because you don’t know what his
motivations will be now,” Paul said, trying his very best to sound professional and professorial. “He might lie to you for reasons other than an involvement in your father’s predicament, whatever that might be. And your judgment may be clouded emotionally.”

I guess it was Maxie’s grin, which widened, that finally got to me. Before I could think, I turned to Paul and said, “This is amazing. You haven’t met Josh, and you’ve already decided not only that he’s going to lie to me but that he’ll do it because he wants to seduce me against my will. I have news for you, pal. I can tell when a man is lying to me, like when you tell me you don’t get jealous.” Paul looked astonished and then shot a glance behind me, but I was on a roll. “And my judgment is fine. If Josh seduces me, believe me, it’ll be because I want him to.”

Maxie make a coughing noise. She doesn’t do that. For one thing, there’s no way she can possibly catch a cold. So now I knew Melissa was probably behind me, but I had worked up a head of steam, and it was, for reasons that were completely and totally irrational, directed at Paul.

“You have to stop acting like you and I have a history,” I said to him. “We have no history. The day I met you, you had already been dead for almost a year.” Paul doesn’t like to use the word
dead
in relation to himself, but then, who would?

I realized I’d probably gone too far when he evaporated before my eyes. The look on his face indicated pain and betrayal. I started to say, “Wait” as he vanished, but there was no time. So I turned to face my daughter.

“What did you just do?” she asked in her tiniest little-girl voice.

“It’s okay, honey,” I said, even though it wasn’t. “I’ll work it out with Paul later. Are you ready to go?”

Melissa looked at me with one of those expressions that flips our familial roles. “That didn’t look okay,” she said.

“Are you ready to go?” I repeated.

“I think so,” she said quietly.

We drove to Janine’s house mostly in silence. Luckily, Harbor Haven isn’t a large town, and we were there in only a few minutes. I walked Melissa to the front door and forced her to let me give her a kiss on the cheek before I turned back toward the car, just to remind her that I was still her mother and we did still love each other. You have to do that every once in a while. Or at least I do.

Back at the house, Nan and Morgan had not yet returned from dinner, so I called to Paul loudly after I closed the front door and removed six or seven layers of outerwear. I figured it was time to clear the air.

But he didn’t show up.

“Come on, Paul, I’m sorry,” I said in a more conversational tone. “I’ve been upset and I said some stuff that I shouldn’t have, and I apologize. We’re going to be together in this house a long time. Let’s not make it difficult.”

Nothing. Not even Maxie.

I ended up spending the rest of the evening by myself. Once Nan and Morgan returned, they didn’t want to sit up and talk, or have a cup of tea. Believe me, I asked. The sound of a human voice would have been helpful. I could have called my mother. I
should
have called my mother. I didn’t call my mother. She’d want to know why I was calling.

Instead, I cleaned up as much as I could without making a lot of noise. It’s a big job keeping such a large house looking good, and you have to work at it every day. I straightened things up in the library, the game room and a couple of the upstairs bedrooms, which didn’t take long because we didn’t have any guests staying upstairs.

When I finally gave into the inevitable and went to my bedroom, gratefully remembering that I had dusted the dresser so there could be no further unsolicited comments, I decided to take a shower. I thought some nice hot water after a day like this would feel soothing.

It did, and I spent an unusually long amount of time in
my en suite bathroom. Once I was out, I dried off, breathed a long sigh and came close to convincing myself things would be better in the morning.

That was, until I noticed the message written in the condensation that had built up on my bathroom mirror: “YOUR FATHER DIDN’T DIE THE WAY YOU THINK.”

Somehow, petty arguments didn’t seem important, and at the top of my lungs, I shouted, “PAUL!”

Eighteen

By the time I picked Melissa up from the bowling party,
Maxie and I had hashed, argued, questioned, puzzled and dissected the idea of the grumpy ghost’s knowing my name. She had said I was overemphasizing it (I believe her words included the phrase “drama queen”), and that the old spirit had simply heard Josh Kaplan use my name and repeated it for effect. But I knew how it felt, and it
felt
like he was threatening everything I held at all dear in my life, and possibly to all life everywhere.

Okay, maybe “drama duchess,” but that was as far as I was willing to go.

Maxie was also appalled because after I’d texted Josh Kaplan my number, he’d called me almost immediately, and we’d made plans to go out the following evening (he closed the store early on Sundays). He’d pick me up at the guesthouse and we’d “discuss my memoir,” which I was starting to think could become code for something else.

The one thing Maxie and I had agreed upon was not to
mention the angry ghost to Melissa, who could put on quite a show of being self-possessed but was in reality still only ten years old. There had been no argument about that.

But I sure as hell was going to tell Paul the first chance I got.

Despite having complained about going to Justin Krenshaw’s birthday bowling party, Melissa seemed reluctant to get into the Volvo to come home. This was partially understandable, as all her friends were standing in the frigid parking lot laughing and gabbing and also because the Volvo’s heating system was roughly as efficient as the United States Congress, which is to say it made a lot of noise but got very little done.

But Liss’s hesitation turned out to be less about hanging around and more about a possible sleepover at Janine’s house that she hadn’t known about until the sixth frame of the second game. “They asked me, but I’m not sure they really want me to go,” she said. “Should I say no?” I should point out that at no time was permission to go to a sleepover that night with no prior notice an issue. I’m a fun mom.

“You have to go,” Maxie suggested. “If you don’t, they’ll talk about you.”

“Go, but only if you want to,” I countered as quickly as I could. “Don’t worry about why you were invited; the point is, you were invited. They wouldn’t ask if they didn’t want you to come.”

“Hmmph,” Maxie snorted.

In the end, of course, it was decided that Liss would spend the night at Janine’s, which had been hastily arranged but okayed by Janine’s mother, Kate. But first we had to go back to the house so that she could gather her sleepover equipment and I could check on my guests. I lit a fire in the fireplace in the den to try to heat the house a little and went to greet the Hendersons.