Chance of a Ghost (5 page)

“Don’t judge,” Jeannie laughed.

“She’s my
mother
!”

“Where do you think you came from, the J. Crew catalog?”

“Jeannie!” I screamed. “Enough!”

It was another ten minutes to my house in Harbor Haven, the hometown I’d returned to after my divorce from a guy we’ll call “The Swine,” strictly for the sake of accuracy. No
snow was falling yet, but I wasn’t crazy about the prospect of it. I had guests back at the house, my daughter was being dropped off after school by her best friend’s mom and there were these two ghosts to manage.

Perhaps I should explain.

About a year ago, I’d bought the massive Victorian at 123 Seafront Avenue to turn into a guesthouse with money I’d gotten from divorcing The Swine and from settling a lawsuit (don’t ask). While I was renovating the place, an “accident” left me with a very bad bump on the head and the sudden ability to see the two spirits, Paul Harrison and Maxie Malone, who inhabited the house.

They’d both died in the house about a year before I bought it—Maxie was the previous owner, and Paul, the newly minted private investigator who’d been hired to find out who was threatening her if she didn’t leave the house; threats that turned out to be serious when they were both poisoned—and though it took some doing, the three of us were able to find their killer. But despite our mutual expectations that Paul and Maxie would “go into the light” or whatever once their murders were solved, nothing much seemed to have changed in that regard. So we’ve had to figure out a way to coexist.

Luckily, right around that same time, I was approached by a man named Edmund Rance, who represented a group called Senior Plus Tours, offering senior citizens vacations with an “added experience” attached. Rance had heard rumors that my guesthouse was haunted—which technically it is—and asked if we could provide evidence thereof at least twice a day in exchange for a steady supply of paying guests during the tourist season (which on the Jersey Shore is at least part of every season except winter, so I was surprised to have even two guests staying with me this week). I prevailed upon Paul, who in turn prevailed upon Maxie, to perform “spook shows,” making objects fly around the house and lately adding such touches as musical instruments “playing
themselves” and strange substances (usually rubber cement, sometimes corn syrup with food coloring) “bleed” down the walls.

That’s entertainment.

But Paul exacted a price for my exploitation of the two ghosts. He’d loved being a PI in life, and even now wanted to keep his hand in investigations—apparently eternity is, in addition to other things, boring—but he’d needed someone living (i.e., me) to do the “legwork.”

There had been some negotiations, but I’d ultimately agreed to get a private-investigator’s license, and so far had used it twice already. I still wasn’t fully on board with the PI life, however—both those experiences had been, to put it mildly, a little unnerving for me. Getting your life threatened will do that to a person.

But back to the problem of what was going on with Mom.

“Okay, I’ll let you live your fantasy,” Jeannie answered me. “Your mother
isn’t
seeing some guy. So what’s
your
explanation for what you heard?”

I couldn’t tell her that I was pretty sure Mom had been talking to a ghost. I mean, I
could
have told her that, but she wouldn’t have believed me, so it wasn’t going to get us anywhere.

She took my momentary silence for capitulation. “Aha!” she shouted. “You agree with me that she has a boyfriend!”

“No. I really don’t. I was just thinking that it doesn’t make sense for some guy to just walk into her house and wait in her bedroom.”

“Why not?” Jeannie demanded.

“Because Mom wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t trust someone enough to give him a key yet never even mention his name to me. She wouldn’t set up some weekly…rendezvous in her bedroom just for…that. Mom hasn’t even talked about meeting anyone. It’s too soon since Dad died.”

“It’s been five years,” Jeannie chimed in helpfully.

I pulled into the driveway at my guesthouse and drove
all the way back behind the house to the carport. There was a little overhang there that would shield the car from most of the snow, if I got lucky and the wind was blowing the right way. A girl could dream. “It’s been a slice, Jeannie,” I told her, “but I have to go batten down my hatches. Is Tony home yet?”

“No, but he’ll be here soon. It’s the baby’s first snowstorm, and we want to make sure he enjoys it with his whole family.” At four months, Oliver would be lucky to stay awake until a full inch was on the ground, and certainly wouldn’t know the difference, but you can’t tell new parents anything.

I hung up my phone and got out of my car, wondering if Murray Feldner, the guy I’d hired to plow snow from my sidewalk and driveway areas, would remember our contract. I’d have to call and remind him. I raised the windshield wipers straight up in the air so they wouldn’t stick to the windshield (although I’ve always harbored a secret plan to leave the car running with the wipers on all through a blizzard), and was halfway to my back door when the realization hit me.

There
had
been something familiar about the way Mom spoke to the person in her bedroom. It
had
conjured up an emotional memory. There was only one person my mother had ever spoken to with such a scolding tone, because she was secure in the knowledge he’d still love her no matter what she said.

The ghost Mom had been shooing out of her house
because I was there
had been my father.

Two

“Your father?” Paul asked. “What makes you think it was
your father?”

Hovering over the pool table in my game room, Paul stroked his goatee, which I’d learned was a sign that he found what I’d said worth considering. It also made him look like a very transparent comparative lit professor from a small New England college instead of the ghost of a rather muscular Canadian PI, which is what he was.

I’d told him about my conversation with Mom after checking in with the only two guests I was hosting this week, Nan and Morgan Henderson. The Hendersons, in their late fifties, were not part of a Senior Plus Tour, so they weren’t expecting any ghostly happenings, which meant that Paul and Maxie had a winter week off.

“Anything you guys need?” I asked Nan, who had just come back from a walk on the beach, saying the cold weather was perfect for such things (Nan had grown up in Vermont and liked the cold; I’d grown up in New Jersey and wished
I’d grown up in Bermuda, so my sensibility was a little different).

“Not so far,” she answered. “We’re looking forward to the snow, but I’m wondering what we’ll do about meals if we’re snowed in.” I don’t supply meals at the guesthouse—we’re not a bed and breakfast, nor a bed and any other meal. I do get my guests discounts at local restaurants in exchange for some accommodations (kickbacks) from the restaurateurs. Hey, it’s a business.

“Usually, things don’t stay unplowed for more than a few hours,” I assured her. “But if we’re really stuck for a long time, I’ll provide meals. Don’t you worry, we won’t let you go hungry.” Knowing how well I cook,
I
was slightly terrified at the prospect, but it seemed really unlikely, so I moved on. “How was the walk on the beach?”

“Oh, it was wonderful!” Nan gushed. “So bracing to be out there while the wind starts to kick up!”

“Bracing,” Morgan echoed. He didn’t sound quite as enthusiastic.

“I’m glad you’re having a good time,” I said.

“A good time.” Morgan seemed incapable of forming his own words; he’d just hit highlights from whatever had just been said to him and put a sour spin on them.

“You two should plan on getting some dinner in town tonight, and I’ll make sure to have a few breakfast things around in the morning just in case,” I said, directing my message to Nan for fear that Morgan would repeat “breakfast things” with a disappointed tone.

The Hendersons went to their room to change for dinner. Melissa wasn’t back from her best friend Wendy’s house yet, so I went to the game room. At one time I could look for the resident ghosts in the attic, where they had often liked to retreat from the usual chaos that occurred on the lower floors, but I’d converted the attic space into a bedroom for Melissa the previous summer, and now I was more likely to
find Paul in the game room or the kitchen, the two areas least often frequented by guests (which led me to think the “game room” might be better suited to another purpose, but I hadn’t yet figured out what that might be).

Sure enough, I’d found him in there—Maxie was still in the attic, since she considered herself and Melissa to be “roommates”—and had filled him in on the whole askew scenario at my mother’s house.

“Your father,” Paul mused. “How do you know? Did you recognize his voice?”

I grimaced to indicate I was unsure. “Not exactly,” I told Paul. “He wasn’t speaking loudly enough for me to really hear his voice clearly. It was more of a murmur through a closed door. I don’t see and hear other ghosts as well as I do you and Maxie.”

Paul nodded slowly, digesting the information. “You
have
seen your father at least once since you found us, though,” he reminded me.

It was true—or at least, I
thought
it was true. In a moment of extreme duress, not long after I’d met Paul and Maxie, I thought I’d seen—or, more precisely, sensed—my father coming to my rescue. But I hadn’t seen his face at all and heard his voice only briefly. And it was the only time.

“I don’t know. If he could, why wouldn’t he get in touch with me? Maybe I just wanted to believe it was him,” I said. “I was new to ghosts then.”

Paul grinned a sly grin. “Not like the pro you are now,” he said. He likes to gently tease me about my limited ghost-seeing abilities.

“You were a private investigator,” I told him, on the off chance that he’d forgotten. “How would you proceed under these circumstances? Suppose I was hiring you.”

“To find out what?” Paul asked. “Just go to your mother and ask if she was talking to your father.”

I shook my head. “Not the way she was acting. This was
something she honestly didn’t want me to know about. She wasn’t happy that I was there, and you know my mother—she’s
always
happy that I’m there.”

Paul tilted his head to the side, which presented an odd image, since he’d been idly listing a little bit that way to begin with. “Yeah,” he said. “That is odd behavior for her.”

Maxie stuck her head through the ceiling and looked down at us. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Planning more renovations? I have ideas.” Maxie had been a budding decorator in life and never fails to have splashy ideas for projects I either can’t afford or simply don’t want to do.

“Calm down,” I told her. “The only thing I’m planning on doing is reorganizing the library and maybe trying to widen the doorframe to make it seem roomier. If you have any ideas for that, feel free.”

She looked disappointed but held up a finger. “Well, I’ve always thought you should—”

I cut her off. “Shouldn’t you think about it first?”

“Why?”

I ignored her and turned my attention back to Paul. “What do you think I should do under the circumstances?” I asked him.

“I still say asking is the best way to find something out,” he responded. “She’s your mother. She’ll talk to you.”

“What’s going on with your mother?” Maxie asked with concern. Maxie likes everyone in my family except me.

“We’ll recap later,” Paul answered her before I could make a cutting remark, which had been my plan. “Just relax, Alison. I’m sure it’s nothing serious.”

I let out a long breath. “You’re probably right. But I’m not going to let it alone.”

He gave an enigmatic smile. “I wouldn’t expect you to,” he said.

“Mom?” I heard Melissa call from the front room. A ten-year-old will never—
never
—come looking for you. They
always yell. Yes, even in a house with paying guests and two freeloading ghosts present at all times.

“Game room,” I called back, trying to be a little less jarring with my tones. Melissa appeared a moment later with a puzzled expression on her face.

“Hi,” she said to the gathering, then looked at me. “Did you know Grandma is here? Her car just pulled up.”

My breath caught a little bit, and not just from a childhood reflex because I hadn’t made my bed that morning. “I just left her,” I said to no one in particular. “Is something wrong?” I headed for the front room.

But my mother appeared in the doorway before I could get halfway there. She acknowledged the ghosts and hugged Melissa, but the expression on her face was strange, much like it had been at her house when she’d realized today was Tuesday—concerned and a little frightened.

“Are you okay?” I asked her. Maxie leaned in a little. She really does love Mom.

Mom’s eyebrows knitted. “Of course I’m okay.”

I’m sure my eyebrows were now the spitting image of hers. (We do look sort of alike—she’s, you know, my mother.) “I was just at your house. What’s wrong?”