Chance of a Ghost (36 page)

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!”

Nineteen

Paul Harrison is a very complicated being—he’s sensitive,
but masculine. He’s funny while remaining serious. He is dead without actually being gone. But one thing he is definitely
not
is vindictive, so when he heard my bloodcurdling scream, he arrived in the bathroom in the blink of an eye. And then just as quickly covered his own.

“Alison!” he shouted. “Put on a robe or something!”

I’d forgotten that I’d just stepped out of the shower. I grabbed the terry-cloth robe I’d had hanging on a towel rack and threw it on. “It’s okay,” I reassured my proper Canadian dead friend. “I’m dressed.” Sort of. It’s amazing how someone else’s panic can make you forget your own sometimes.

Paul unclasped his hand from his eyes. “What were you screaming about?” he said. “You scared me half…” He did not finish the sentence.

“That,” I told him, pointing to the mirror. The words were still clearly visible, as Paul had not opened the door to
come in, so the air was not losing its humidity very quickly. He hovered over to look at it more closely.

Then there was banging on my bedroom door. “Alison?” Nan called in quietly. “Are you all right?”

They were going to go back to thinking I was nuts. Swell. “I’m okay, Nan,” I answered. “Sorry to scare you.”

“Are you sure?” Morgan said, clearly after Nan had told him what she’d heard. “Can we come in and check?”

I beg your pardon?
“Come in and check?” I said more to myself than anyone else.

“Of course,” Paul said. “You said he’s an ex-cop. He wants to come in and see that no one is holding you hostage and making you say everything’s all right.”

That made sense. “Just a second,” I said, and stopped, once Paul had discreetly turned away, to at least throw on the pajamas I’d taken out and then got back into the robe. I walked to the bathroom door, then the bedroom door, unlatched it and let the Hendersons inside. “Sorry again. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“Did something frighten you?” Nan asked. “You sounded terrified.”

Paul, looking at the note on the mirror in the bathroom and stroking his goatee, seemed mesmerized. “Who could have gotten in?” I heard him ask himself. “Or what?”

“I found something in my bathroom that is…Well, I can’t explain it.” Maybe the time had come to tap Morgan’s police expertise. “All the doors in the house are locked.” I couldn’t let them know I was perfectly capable of imagining something
flying
in and leaving a message. We were just getting past the point where my guests thought I was crazy.

Nan passed this along to Morgan, who had been cupping his ear standing behind her but clearly hadn’t caught much of what was being said. And that’s when I noticed he had only one hearing aid, in his right ear; he must have rushed to get here when Nan heard me shout. “Show me what it
was you found,” he said. Cops are cops. No niceties, just let’s see the problem.

I led them into the bathroom, and for once, thanked fate that the words had not yet vanished off the mirror, which would have once again led my guests to the conclusion that they were giving their hard-earned vacation money to a madwoman. Morgan’s eyebrows rose when he saw the message, and he examined the mirror very closely, opening the medicine cabinet door carefully with two fingers and touching as little of the surface as possible.

“Nan,” he said, addressing his wife like he was directing another officer under his command, “go downstairs and get about a paper cup worth of ash from the fireplace. And some tape.” Without so much as a blink, she was gone and headed downstairs.

I shot a glance at Paul, who was watching Morgan work, clearly with approval. Nan soon reappeared with one of the bathroom cups from the room she and Morgan were renting, filled about a third of the way with fireplace ash. Morgan reached out his hand and took it from her with a nod. Officer Nan was clearly acknowledged and took her place a few feet away to let the detective work.

Morgan looked at the sink where some of my makeup supplies were laid out and picked up a cosmetics brush. He held it out so I could see it. “Can I use this?” he asked. I had no idea what he was going to do, but I nodded.

He took the brush and very gently placed it into the cup, to get some ash in the bristles. Then he more or less painted the mirror with the ash, very lightly and just on the areas where the message had been scrawled.

“Hmmm…” Morgan sort of growled, a low sound in the back of his throat. It was almost like humming. I didn’t dare say a word.

“He’s looking for fingerprints,” Paul explained. I nodded just enough for him to see I’d understood. We both knew he would find none.

Morgan repeated the procedure, smearing the fireplace ash on three separate areas of the mirror, each time looking very carefully at his work, then standing back to see it from another angle, all the while making that very low humming sound in his throat. I got caught up watching the procedure and actually forgot to be terrified for a few minutes.

When he was finished, Morgan put down the cup and the brush, moving his pursed lips back and forth, almost literally chewing over what he’d learned, which didn’t seem to be much. “I don’t see any prints,” he said after a moment. “No need for the tape; I can’t lift anything. My best guess is that whoever did this wore gloves, but not leather ones or anything with a seam. Maybe something knitted or cloth, but I didn’t see any fibers or residue of any kind. Very careful work, probably with gloves.”