Inspector Specter (6 page)

After McElone turned around and walked away, no doubt to pack up the one stray paper clip on her impeccably neat desk and take her leave of absence, Melissa and I took Wendy to the Stud Muffin, where her mother, Barbara, reported a lovely evening out with her husband, and we reported a lovely evening spent in with Wendy.

The whole way back home, Melissa peppered me with questions about Detective Ferry, what McElone had told me when Melissa couldn't hear (I answered with something terrifically helpful like, “Oh, it was nothing important, honey”) and what we were going to do to help.

“
I'm
going to do exactly what I promised the lieutenant I'd do,” I told her. “Wait for Paul to get some information to pass along, and then pass it along. The rest of the time, I'm going to be a good innkeeper and a fabulous mother, just like always.”

She didn't even chuckle at the “fabulous mother” crack. “But we can't find Paul,” she said. “How can he report anything if we don't get to talk to him?”

Liss had a point, but I didn't want to hear it. “He'll be there when we get home,” I said with some very shaky confidence in my voice. “You'll see.” I made a mental deal with myself that if Maxie wasn't in the house either when we got back, I was going to call Kitty and ask if everything was all right. Let Maxie get mad at me when the phone rang at her mother's house. By the time she got home, she'd be in another mood entirely. Or so I told myself.

“Even if he is back, we need to be doing something more than waiting,” Melissa protested. “The lieutenant is really upset, and she's our friend, so we should do whatever we can to help her.” My daughter is without question a better person than I am, but she's eleven. She has lots of time to get worse.

“We are doing everything we can,” I said. “We're keeping the lieutenant from having anything else to worry about. She wants us to stand on the sidelines, and that is precisely what we're going to do.”

“But—”

“No. That's it. No wiggle room on this one, Liss. I agree with Lieutenant McElone. This is her thing to do, and she really does have the experience and the authority I don't have. She
is
hurting, and you're right to want to make her feel better, but all you and I can do is follow her instructions. I'm not discussing it beyond that. Clear?”

Liss seemed stunned that I was playing the mom card so forcefully. She sat back, folded her arms and didn't talk to me the rest of the ride home. I wasn't thrilled about that, but it indicated that she had at least heard my argument and would abide by it.

Oddly enough, I had been right about one thing: When we got back to the house, Paul was floating around the den looking serious, which is his default look. Melissa's face lit up when she saw him. “Paul!”

Bonnie Claeson, my sleepiest guest, was now awake and sitting in an armchair near the door of the den, reading a book. Bonnie seemed comfortable with the idea of ghosts in the house, but rather than interact with them, she seemed to simply want to spend most of her time quietly reading or walking on the beach.

My favorite kind of guest.

Now, Bonnie looked up, amused, at Liss, then went back to the book she was reading without so much as a word.

“What's wrong?” Paul asked, no doubt a little surprised by Melissa's oversized greeting.

“We couldn't find you,” Liss said, moving to the far end of the room. Bonnie didn't seem to be listening to the conversation, but we didn't want to disturb her reading.

“Well, I was here,” Paul said. “Don't worry.” He seemed to be looking at the ceiling, which was odd. Paul was rarely evasive.

“We looked everywhere,” Liss insisted.

“Clearly not
everywhere
,” Paul told her. “I wasn't
nowhere
.” It was worse than I thought; he was treating Melissa like a child, which he'd never done before. I began to wonder exactly what Paul could possibly be trying to hide.

I kept my voice low but conversational. “We really did search pretty thoroughly,” I told him. “Have you seen Maxie?”

“Not recently,” Paul said. “Is something wrong?”

“I need her to do some research,” I explained. “Lieutenant McElone is taking some personal time to look for Ferry's killer on her own, and she wants us to sit around and do nothing until you can get in touch with the detective himself.”

Paul's hand went to his goatee, but he didn't stroke it. Not yet. He needed more.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the flash drive McElone had given me. “Take this and put it in your pocket,” I told Paul.

“Clever, Mom,” Melissa said, smiling. “That way nobody but us can ever get it back.” That was the plan. Very few people could see Paul, and even those of us who could wouldn't be able to get the tiny flash drive if he hid it in his clothing, since the ghosts can make objects “disappear” to the living by doing that. It helps them transport objects through walls and so forth. Maxie, for example, will often “put on” a bulky trench coat in order to move the laptop around.

“Exactly.” I told Paul what was on the drive, and he looked impressed. He put it into the pocket of his jeans. “And don't give it to anybody but me, Liss or my mother.”

“Of course,” Paul answered somberly. His British/Canadian upbringing meant he could do serious like few others. “Now, what's this about Maxie?”

Maxie.
Remember her?
“I need to call her mother,” I told Paul, reaching for my phone. “Maxie keeps going over there, supposedly to visit Kitty, but she gets really defensive about it. I'm worried something's wrong.”

Paul looked concerned. “Now that you bring it up, Maxie has been especially mercurial recently.”

If Paul noticed a change in Maxie's mood, it could be serious. I got the impression my two resident ghosts didn't interact very much when we were not all meeting communally. It's not that they don't like each other; they just don't have much at all in common. So Paul isn't always Maxie's most meticulous observer. Seeing a change in her demeanor meant the change was not subtle; but then, nothing about Maxie is subtle.

“That's it,” I said. “I'm calling Kitty.”

“Why?” came a voice from behind me. My father, floating a foot or so off the floor, was suddenly there, a habit he's picked up since passing away, and one that is not my very favorite of all time. I adore my dad, but it was so much more convenient when you could hear his shoes on the floor.

“Hi, Grampa!” Melissa always brightens up when her grandfather is in the room. They have a special bond.

“Hello, peanut,” he said to my daughter. “How's tricks?”

“Tricky,” she answered. A private joke. My own grandfather once told me that grandparents and grandchildren always get along well because they have a common enemy. Now that I was on the other side of that, I chose not to believe it.

“Hi, Dad,” I said. “I take it Mom is here?”

“Coming in from the car,” he answered. “She brought dinner. It's not cooked yet, but she brought it.”

Sure enough, there was a sound coming from the kitchen, as Mom, no doubt weighted down by the fifth-grader's backpack she uses in place of a purse, had stuffed more supplies to prepare a meal than you'd swear could fit into the backpack. The woman can cook, and she can pack. Both skills must have skipped a generation, because I don't have them. Melissa is still in the development stage, but already she's surpassed me in cuisine.

I opened the kitchen door. “Mom? Need help?”

“Nah,” came the reply. “I just put the whole backpack in the fridge. So my driver's license will be a little chilly. In this weather, that's not a bad thing.”

“There was room in the fridge?” I asked, mostly talking to myself.

“The carrot didn't take up much room.” Mom never actually runs me down—even when she should—but the no-cooking thing is a sore point with her. She thinks I'm forsaking a wonderful talent I surely possess yet am refusing to put to use. She's wrong.

As Mom joined the group in the den, Bonnie Claeson greeted her (obviously, she couldn't see Dad), then said she was going up to her room for a bit. I made a mental note to ask Bonnie if she had any relatives who might want to come stay with us for a while, too. Having her here was like hosting no guests, but I got money.

As Bonnie headed up the stairs, the rest of us turned our attention to Paul, as if it had been previously agreed that we would do so. He watched after Bonnie for a moment, then looked back down at us and started. “What?” he said, seeing our expectant faces.

“I don't know,” I said. “You usually have a plan of some kind.”

Paul shrugged. “I got nothin'.” He puts on what he thinks is a Jersey accent when he's trying to be a regular guy. It doesn't work.

“Why are you calling Maxine's mother?” my dad asked again. Mom walked in behind him, and he turned to smile at her. They have a great marriage, despite her being widowed.

“Maxie's been acting strange, and Mom thinks maybe Kitty is sick or something,” Melissa helpfully reported.

“Oh, my,” Mom said. “Is it serious?”

“I don't even know if there's an ‘it' yet, Mom. It's just that Maxie has been visiting her mom a lot, and she's being touchy about it. That's all I know for sure.”

“You should call Kitty,” Dad suggested.

“I will,” I said, and got out my phone. I saw I had a new text message from McElone, asking if I'd secured the flash drive she'd given me. I looked up at Paul and smiled before texting back that the information was more secure than she could imagine. Then I looked at Melissa. “What she really wanted was an update, and we saw her just over an hour ago. She's more demanding than almost any client we've ever had.”

Melissa shook her head. “Not as bad as Mrs. Murphy,” she said. My client on Everett Sandheim's murder. Everett, a sweet bear of a man once you knew him, had been considerably easier to get along with than the client, even when confronted with his death in a public restroom. I liked Everett. He was no longer the mountain of a homeless man I'd known when he was alive. As a ghost, he'd reverted to a younger, trimmer form, that of the military man he'd been years before.

“What client is this?” Dad asked. “You out there gumshoeing again?”

We brought my parents up to speed on the Detective Ferry investigation, which horrified my mother and got my father looking worried. “You be careful, baby girl,” he said to me when I was done.

“Me? All I have to do is wait around. Paul's carrying the dangerous information, and there's nothing much that anybody can do to him.”

“Detective Ferry was the lieutenant's friend,” Liss said. “She feels bad, and she wants to do something.”

“Just like you should do for Maxine and Kitty,” Mom reminded me, and once again I reached for my phone.

Clearly, the call was simply not meant to be. A considerable tumult came from the front room, and moments later, Jeannie, Tony and Oliver appeared, Tony's arms loaded with supplies that appeared to range from stuffed animals to frozen containers of food, and Jeannie's loaded with Oliver, who was crying on her shoulder.

“He's been cranky all day,” Tony said, putting down a suitcase, a blanket, what appeared to be a quart of carrot juice and a box of flash cards. “I'll be right back.” He turned and headed back toward the front door.

“Where are you going?” Melissa asked.

“To get the next load.”

“He's not cranky,” Jeannie said. “He's dealing with abandonment issues.”

I walked over to try to take Oliver from her, but Jeannie was holding on like Montgomery Burns to his last animated billion. “Abandonment?” I said. “You're still here.”

“He's seen the luggage,” she answered. “He's very intelligent.”

“He's eleven months old, and you've never gone away before.”

“He's intuitive.”

“He's spoiled,” Dad volunteered, but luckily Jeannie couldn't hear him. Of course, even if Jeannie
could
hear him, she'd decide Dad's comment was really just the wind blowing or a seagull honking as it flew by. Jeannie was a master of seeing and hearing only what she wanted to. That applied to babies as well as ghosts, apparently.

Paul simply looked mildly irritated. He is a lovely man, but hardly warm and fuzzy with children. They interrupt his investigative process.

“Jeannie, he'll be fine,” I said. Melissa came around to get into Oliver's line of sight—he usually responds to her with a big grin. But he wasn't looking at her this time, and kept crying.

Tony walked in with a portable playpen under one arm, a yellow plastic bucket on his head (almost covering his eyes, which made his gait unsteady) and a beach ball, inflated, under his other arm. In his hands were a large box of raisins and a small tom-tom.