Chance of a Ghost (9 page)

That kind of talk always raises my suspicions. “Oh, really,” I said. “What is it he wants from you?” My mind wasn’t wrapping itself around this one comfortably. What could a ghost want? They can’t spend money. They can’t take ransom.

“It’s not me he wants something from; it’s you,” Mom said to me.

I could feel my eyes narrow. “What is it he wants?” I asked.

“He wants you to find out who murdered him.”

This had a familiar ring. When I’d first met Paul and Maxie, that was the very request they’d made of me, and it hadn’t been easy to fulfill. I was in no hurry to try doing something like
that
again.

Paul sighed before I could. “I understand his torment,” he said. “But how did he know about Alison’s ability to see
people like us? Does he know she has a private-investigator’s license?”

Mom finished her bottle of beer and looked away, pretending to search for the recycling bin she knew perfectly well I kept next to the fridge. “I might have…mentioned something about it,” she said, making sure not to establish eye contact with me.

Maxie stifled a giggle. When she died, Maxie was a twenty-eight-year-old who had probably topped out at sixteen on the maturity charts. Things hadn’t changed much since then.

I decided to pretend not to notice Maxie and turned toward Mom. “So you’ve been bragging about my detective skills to your dead friends?” I asked.

“Maybe a little. But you know, you don’t give yourself enough credit.”

Sometimes it is very difficult not to roll one’s eyes heavenward. In this case, I found it impossible. For one thing, I know I’m not a good investigator—Paul does most of the brainwork, and I do the legwork—and for another, Mom wouldn’t know a good detective if she met Sherlock Holmes at the clubhouse of her condo complex. Which I wasn’t sure she hadn’t.

Before the top of my head could blow off, Paul floated between Mom and me. “Do we have any details, Loretta?” he asked. “Do we know exactly when Mr. Laurentz died and how he was murdered?”

Mom seemed much happier dealing with Paul, so I took a seat and considered having a drink myself but didn’t want to open a bottle of wine just for me. I’d have to look into wine six-packs.

“I met Lawrence at the clubhouse in our development about two months ago, and he began coming around to the house every once in a while right after that. He said he had died a little over six months ago. Last June,” Mom reported
dutifully. “He says he was electrocuted, but that the police think he had a heart attack or something.”

Paul’s eyes perked up. “Electrocuted? How?”

“He says someone threw an electric toaster into his bubble bath.”

Maxie guffawed, and this time I was grateful. It covered my own involuntary yelp quite nicely. Mom gave Maxie a disdainful look.

“The man was murdered, Maxine,” she reminded her.

“Sorry, Mrs. Kerby.” Maxie sounded like a third grader being admonished by her teacher, but her grin was unmistakable.

Mom huffed a bit, but Paul refocused her attention from Maxie’s (and my) insolence to his questioning. He seemed genuinely interested. Paul likes nothing better than an unsolved mystery. It’s one of the few things about him I find completely annoying.

“How could Mr. Laurentz not know who threw a toaster into his bath?” he asked. “He would have seen the person enter the bathroom, surely.” Paul speaks with such lovely syntax, owing to his British/Canadian background. Or maybe he’s just really polite.

Mom squinted, an indication that she’s concerned she’s about to say something that will be open to ridicule. I’m afraid Dad and I were rather merciless in our teasing when I was growing up, though in a loving way. Even Melissa, who is smarter than all of us and who loves her grandmother dearly, occasionally giggles at the things my mother says.

“Lawrence said that the person who threw it was invisible,” she declared.

In this crowd, that’s not so outrageous a statement, but I heard a stifled giggle from the game room doorway, and there stood Melissa, confirming her grandmother’s fears that what she’d said would be received with something other than complete reverence. Liss was holding the iPod
touch her father had given her a few months before as a bribe. But under her arm was her school laptop.

“You were supposed to be in your room,” I said.

Melissa shot a guilty glance at Maxie, who quickly shut the laptop she had, let’s face it, stolen from me. Scowling, I walked to the spook, who did not think to rise up to the ceiling to avoid me.

“What are you doing?” I intoned.

Maxie made a sound with her lips that indicated she was unconcerned with my authority. She opened the computer and turned the screen toward me.

It showed Melissa’s Skype name but nothing on the main screen because Liss had closed her laptop. On the tiny screen-within-a-screen below was a picture of the game room and the assembled therein in this case, Melissa, Mom and me, because the ghosts did not register on the laptop’s web cam.

“You Skyped this to Melissa?” I said. “When I’d sent her upstairs?”

“Oh, grow up,” Maxie said.

“I was worried about Grandma,” my daughter tried.

“Go to your room,” I said.

“Mom!”

“Not you,” I said to my daughter. I turned toward Maxie. “You.”

The ghost looked at my face, huffed and flew up into the ceiling.

Five

That had been a lot to absorb, and I wasn’t feeling very
absorbent at the moment. So I reminded Mom that we were expecting a great deal of snow and encouraged her to head back to her town house. I told her Paul and I would confer on the Laurentz matter and I’d get back to her after the oncoming blizzard was shoveled off my front walk and my driveway. It was already starting to get dark outside.

Unfortunately, Paul had heard me tell her about the “conferring” and thought I actually wanted to do so as soon as Mom had left. I’d really just been trying to stall, forgetting Paul’s weakness for unsolved crimes.

I asked Melissa to call Murray Feldner about the plowing (partly to get her to go elsewhere in the house and partly because I figured she’d guilt Murray into it) and Paul followed me into the kitchen, staying directly behind—and a little bit above—me.

“An invisible person throwing an electric toaster into a
bathtub!” he marveled. “It seems impossible, but we’ve seen stranger things happen, haven’t we, Alison?”

I ignored him in pursuit of dinner, figuring I should probably feed myself and my daughter sometime soon. The refrigerator, more fully stocked than usual, contained a loaf of bread, some eggs, milk, an actual bag of lettuce, orange juice, English muffins and one Red Delicious apple. There was some meat in the separate freezer downstairs and bacon in the meat compartment here in the fridge. In other words, I was completely ready to make breakfast. And a salad with lettuce and an apple.

It was, as I said, better than usual. Yeah. I know. Would Sun Star Chinese Noodle deliver once the snow started falling?

“I really didn’t think we were going to talk about this now, Paul,” I told him. “I’ve got to plan for my first major snowstorm with guests in the house. I have to deal with possible meals cooked here and activities for them if we can’t go outside tomorrow.” (Actually, I wasn’t that worried because I know how quickly this area digs out from even heavy snow and was fairly sure I wouldn’t have to do more than maybe cook breakfast, turning the place into a B and B for all of one morning.) “Can’t the crazy ghost who thinks he got fried by a toaster wait?”

I wasn’t looking directly at Paul, but I got the impression—don’t ask me how; sometimes it’s an intuitive thing with the ghosts—that he stopped in what would be, for a living person, his tracks. “You don’t want to investigate this case?” he asked. “Your mother is concerned. She thinks your father is being held somewhere against his will.”

“And I think she’s being a nut,” I countered, walking into the kitchen and heading directly for the refrigerator. “My father doesn’t show up to one of their clandestine little rendezvous and right away she buys the story of some mentally disturbed spirit—no offense—who tells her a goofy
story. Give my dad a few days to come back, and you’ll see there’s nothing wrong.”

“I don’t understand your attitude,” Paul said. “You don’t seem concerned about your father at all.”

“I’m not,” I answered. “I’m sure he’s fine, wherever he is.”

I walked to the silverware drawer, where we keep the take-out menus. I pulled out the one for Harbor Pizza, deciding that Chinese food wasn’t good blizzard fare. Calzones. Now
that’s
what you eat during a blizzard. I’d have to check the freezer for ice cream, too. You’re supposed to be cold in a blizzard, right?

“This is about his not visiting you, isn’t it?” Paul asked.

I slammed the drawer closed. “
No
,” I said with a little too much emphasis. “It’s not about my father’s not visiting me.” Definitely ice cream. With hot fudge. But no cherries. Maraschino cherries are an abomination.

“I think it is. I think you’re angry at him for coming to see your mother once a week but never coming to see you. And I think that’s why you don’t want to discuss this case we’ve been hired to—”

I pivoted to face Paul directly but had to crane my neck upward to do it. “We haven’t been
hired
to do anything!” I shouted. “
We
can’t be hired to do anything! You’re dead, and I’m an innkeeper, not a private eye! This is a ridiculous pretend game we’re playing, and it’s almost gotten me killed more than once. I’m not doing it again; is that understood?”

Paul’s eyes had widened at my first howl. “Alison,” he began.

I cut him off. “Is. That. Understood?” I repeated.

He pointed his finger at a spot behind me and then vanished. I spun to see where he’d been pointing, which, as it turned out, was the kitchen door.

There stood Nan and Morgan Henderson. And they were not looking like they had complete confidence in the woman whose house they’d be sharing for the next several days,
possibly with a great deal of snow prohibiting travel in the area.

In fact, they looked downright alarmed. Nan had her hands gripping Morgan’s left arm, and her knuckles were a little whiter than I would have preferred. Morgan, for his part, had involuntarily bared his upper teeth in a snarl meant, I think, to keep the crazy lady at bay until reinforcements could be summoned.

“I’m so sorry,” was the only thing I could think to say. The three of us stood there for a long moment. No doubt they were expecting a more detailed explanation for my behavior. I would have been happy to provide one. But let’s face it—I had nothing. I thanked my good luck I hadn’t been holding a carving knife when they’d walked in.

“Is something…wrong?” Nan asked. “You sounded upset.”

“I was just…I had…” Was I going to tell them that one of the household ghosts had been annoying me with his insistence that we investigate the death of a man in a bathtub so I could find my deceased father, who was apparently being held against his will in some sort of bizarre posthumous blackmail scheme? Somehow that seemed like a bad strategy. “I’ve had some family difficulties,” I finally managed. “I guess I was just venting. I’m sorry. I thought you’d left for dinner, or I wouldn’t have made so much noise.”

Nan had pasted a frozen smile on her face, similar to the sort typically seen on the terrified girl when confronting the serial killer in slasher movies. “Oh, don’t worry,” she said. “It’s fine.” It was a wonder she didn’t start backing toward the door, but she held her ground.

“Fine,” Morgan parroted.

“No, seriously,” I argued. “I don’t want you to think I do that all the time. Please, I want you to feel comfortable here.”

“We’re comfortable,” Nan’s mouth said, though her eyes
screamed, “We’re calling the police as soon as we make it outside.” Morgan, at least, didn’t echo her words.

“Would you like a recommendation for dinner?” I tried.

“Sure!” she answered, much too quickly and too loudly. I gave them the names of two nice restaurants within walking distance and one that was a ten-minute drive from the house. I was willing to bet they’d ignore all my suggestions and head for the nearest place they could find to plot their escape. But the oncoming snow would probably keep them in my clutches at least another day or two.

Exhaling, I tried to lighten the tension before they could leave. “I’m really very sorry about before,” I said with a soothing tone. “It wasn’t my best moment, and I promise you, it won’t happen again.”

Nan seemed to relax a little this time. “I understand,” she said. “I’ve—
we’ve—
had some trying times ourselves lately. It’s why we were so looking forward to this vacation.” She couldn’t help but give Morgan a sideways glance.

They turned to leave. Morgan mumbled something, and once they were out the door, I almost collapsed into a kitchen chair. I had to remember that my current guests didn’t know the place was, for lack of a better word, “haunted.” I’d gotten so used to the Senior Plus Tours guests, who
wanted
there to be ghosts, that I’d dropped my defenses. Couldn’t let that happen again.