An Uninvited Ghost (20 page)

Trent held up his right hand. “Maybe I’m not as good at handling people as I thought,” he said. “I give up.”

My cell phone rang, and since it was almost exactly a half hour since I’d left Melissa, I figured she was calling in a mere fifteen minutes late. Instead, the caller ID showed Linda Jane Smith’s cell number. Was one of my guests having some sort of medical problem? I flipped open the phone.

“I think you might want to come back,” Linda Jane said immediately. “Stuff is flying all over the front room.”

“Stuff?”

“I think it’s entirely possible your ghosts are having a fight,” she said.

Trent’s driver took Melissa and me directly back to the house on Trent’s orders. He was also told that any speeding tickets he acquired would be gladly paid by the production company, so it took only about fifteen minutes to go from boardwalk to door.

I’d pretty much had to drag Melissa away from the boardwalk games—there’s one involving rolling balls into holes while the theme from
The Flintstones
plays to which she’s especially attached—but once I told her Paul and Maxie needed us, she agreed to take her 266 tickets and live to play another day.

We arrived at the house just in time to see a tomato go flying by the front door. It was followed by an apple, which was in turn countered by a shoe traveling in the other direction. Jim Bridges and Warren Balachik were nowhere to be seen, but Dolores Santiago, Bernice Antwerp and Linda Jane Smith were standing in the foyer watching the objects put on a show. At this point, I would’ve been more surprised if I
did
see the Joneses than I was by their absence. Bernice was in full disapproval mode, and Linda Jane seemed quite amused.

“I don’t know what the snit is about, but it’s weird to see stuff flying around when it’s not ten in the morning or four in the afternoon,” she said.

Of course, I could see what was going on. As soon as the front door closed behind Melissa and me, Paul and Maxie stopped tossing each other random pieces of fruit and extraneous decorations, and Paul came down from the upper reaches of the room to talk to me.

“Scott McFarlane is back,” he said. “We needed to get you here, so we got someone to call you.”

“This is the best you could do?” I sputtered. “A food fight to get my attention?”

“We could have used that little sailor guy statue,” Maxie grinned.

“I wasn’t talking to you” was the best I could do.

It took some doing, but I got Melissa to agree to get up to bed by promising to give her a full rundown on Scott and whatever was about to happen tonight. The guests who had been watching, apparently deciding the show was now over, applauded and started to disperse. I immediately tried to avoid Dolores, because I still didn’t know how to react to the bizarre behavior she’d exhibited the night before.

But of course she sought me out even as I was trying to move to the kitchen, where Paul and I could at least attempt to speak without interruption. She stood directly in front of me and stared some more at the amulet on the chain, which I’d mended and put back on this morning.

“That’s a very beautiful piece of jewelry you have,” Dolores crooned. “May I touch it?”

I worked very hard at not changing my facial expression into one of utter puzzlement. “You already have,” I said. “In fact, you tore it off my neck and tried to steal it.”

“Alison . . .” Paul tried to interject. “Not now.”

But Dolores had already heard what I’d told her, and her reaction was brief, but telling. There was a pause of perhaps one second when she stared at me blankly, and then she laughed.

“Oh, was this last night?” she asked. I nodded without a word, and she laughed some more, not uproariously, but heartily. “I’m sure it was a somnambulant episode.”

This time,
I
stared blankly.

“I was sleepwalking,” Dolores explained. “It happens to me sometimes. It’s been months. Perhaps I should adjust my medication. Did I do anything inappropriate?”

Most other people would have reiterated that, yeah, trying to walk off with another person’s jewelry might be seen as inappropriate, but I am trying to run a business, and Dolores was a paying customer. “Nothing important,” I said.

Dolores chuckled. “Well, no harm done, then,” she said. “I wonder if I could try to record the spectral vibrations while I sleep.” She started to walk away, then turned back toward me and, as an afterthought, said, “I’m ambidextrous, too.”

I stood there shaking my head for a few seconds. I couldn’t remember whether I’d opened a guesthouse or a facility for treating the mentally ill. If it was the latter, we weren’t doing a very good job.

“Alison,” Paul repeated. He pointed toward the kitchen. “Can we go now?”

Oh yeah. This wasn’t an insane asylum. It was a haunted house. That made tons more sense. I walked slowly toward the kitchen, trying to regain my equilibrium.

Linda Jane appeared at my side as I walked. “That was quite a show,” she said. “Frankly, I never believed all this ghost stuff until now. I figured you were working some kind of angle. But if all this stuff can happen when you’re not even here, there must be something to it.”

“There must be,” I agreed. “Please excuse me. I’ll be right back.” I walked into the kitchen, leaving behind Linda Jane, who was probably scratching her head and wondering if
I
was on some kind of sleepwalking medication.

In the kitchen, I could see the red bandana, looking a little the worse for wear, hovering just behind the kitchen table. Paul took up a position with a clear view of the kitchen door and the back window. He tended to situate himself like Jesse James in a saloon poker game—he never wanted to have his back to the door. Maxie preferred the bird’s-eye view and placed herself near the ceiling. I didn’t stop to analyze her choice.

“Okay, Scott,” I said in a gruff tone. After all, the ghost had gotten me involved with Arlice Crosby, who’d died in my house, and then he’d vanished (not that I could ever have seen him anway) for more than a day. “Where’ve you been? What’s going on?”

Before Scott could respond, Maxie said, “He says he was going off to investigate Arlice and her murder, and that he feels responsible for bringing her here and maybe for her dying.”

“Investigate?” I asked. “How was he investigating? He’s a ghost and—sorry, Scott—blind as well.”

“True, but it means my hearing is all the more acute,” Scott replied, unoffended. “I went back to the Ocean Wharf to see what would happen, and I was there when you came in with the lawyer, Tom Donovan. I recognized his voice as the one who was there with that unfortunate lady.”

“I didn’t see you there,” I said. I was taken aback that he’d been there without my knowledge, and as I occasionally did these days, I wondered how often a similar situation was the case.

“I wasn’t wearing the bandana,” he replied.

Paul watched intently as Scott answered. I knew he was reading Scott’s face, but since I had no idea what the blind ghost looked like, it was impossible for me to picture him. Paul would have to give me his impressions—which were usually pretty well observed—later.

“So you don’t know anything that I didn’t already know,” I answered. “We’re no better off than before.”

“That’s not so,” Scott said. “After the lady detective let you go, I waited for Tom Donovan to be questioned, and his story changed. He told her that he had never been there before, and that it was you who was asking a lot of questions about Mrs. Crosby’s will. He said that amulet you’re wearing was a valuable gift you’d coerced Mrs. Crosby into giving you.”

My mouth was suddenly dry and my eyes wouldn’t blink. “He said
what
?”

“I followed him back to his office later on and heard him go to his computer. He was sending a . . . computer message . . .”

“An e-mail,” I corrected, unsure why I was bothering to correct his techno jargon.

“Yes,” Scott said. “He’s one of those men who says out loud what he’s typing. Whoever he was talking to must have wanted to know how the visit went, and whether the police had believed his story. He said they did.”

My head was vibrating now. “Paul . . .” I began.

“Something is very wrong,” Paul agreed. “But I can’t believe McElone bought that story, or she would have been looking for you all day.”

Instinctively, my hand went into my pocket and brought out my cell phone. I hit the button for messages, and found four from McElone.

“I think things just got a lot worse,” I told him.

“On the contrary,” Paul answered. “I think we just had our first break in this case.”

 

 

Scott agreed, at my suggestion, to go back to wherever it was he usually stayed and not to come back until the morning. I needed the time with Paul and Maxie alone, and I think Scott understood that, although I certainly couldn’t tell through his facial expression.

As soon as the red bandana vanished, I looked at Paul and asked, “How much do you trust this guy? How well do you know him?”

“You think he’s lying?” Maxie asked. “A blind guy?”

“There’s never been a liar who couldn’t see? Paul, how do you know him?”

Paul frowned. “He responded when I sent out a . . . message about our willingness to investigate for those like us.”

“You’re advertising me on the Ghosternet?” My head was swimming. McElone would probably be by to arrest me by morning. Who’d watch Melissa if I was in prison?

“I was simply letting those like us know there was someone they could depend upon,” Paul countered. “But to answer your real question, I have no reason to distrust Scott McFarlane.”

“Do you have any reason to
trust
him?”

He stroked his goatee, thinking, then raised his hands in frustration. “No.”

“Terrific.”

“He seems like a pretty nice guy,” Maxie offered. Coming from Maxie, that was practically a case for canonization, but it didn’t really tell us anything, and I said as much. She puffed out her lips, but she didn’t dispute my logic.

“We need to mobilize,” Paul said. “We’ve been sitting on our heels on this case for too long. It’s time to take some offensive action.”

“I like that,” Maxie said. “Who can we offend?”

“Aren’t you the one who kept telling me to let McElone handle the investigation and that I shouldn’t get involved?” I asked Paul, ignoring Maxie entirely.

Paul looked distracted. “We didn’t have a client then. Now, we do.”

“Yeah, one who’s trying to get me arrested. Thanks for getting me into the detective business, by the way.”

“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Paul said.

“I’ve had enough,” I told him. Suddenly, my mind was as clear as clean water. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

Paul’s eyes widened, and Maxie looked positively amazed, but neither of them interrupted me.

“Paul, you need to get me really up to speed on the art of surveillance and what is or is not admissible in court. I’m going to be seeing what’s up with our trusted client, and I don’t want him to know I’m doing it.”

“What about me?” Maxie wanted to know. Wow. I must have really sounded authoritative for her to react like that.

“You’re going to use your computer skills. Get my laptop out of my bedroom and go up to that beloved attic of yours. There should be a perfectly good Wi-Fi signal up there.”

“What am I researching?” she asked.

“I want a complete write-up on every person who was in that room when Arlice Crosby died. I want to see why any one of them would want her out of the way. Think you can handle it?”

Maxie shook her head. “I’m better at taking revenge.”

“I know, but this is the job.”

“Can we discuss the attic if I do it?” Maxie never did anything without extracting a price.

“Discuss, yes, but that’s all I’m committing to. You’re going to have to give me a much stronger argument than ‘It’s my room,’ understand?”

Maxie actually brightened. “Understood. What else?”

I drew a deep breath. “Something neither of you can do for me, I’m afraid.”

Paul’s brow furrowed. “What’s that?”

“I have to call my mother.”

“Of course I didn’t think you were asking Donovan about Arlice Crosby’s will, and that business about the necklace was just silly.” Lieutenant Anita McElone gave me her best look of disdain. “
I
was asking about the will. When a woman that wealthy is murdered, a cop has to be an idiot not to find out where the money is going. But you’d met Arlice that day. How the hell could you have gotten into her will that fast? Tom Donovan was trying, and very badly at that, to make you look suspicious.”

“Well, that’s horrible,” my mother said. We were sitting in McElone’s cubicle Sunday morning, and none of us was happy to be there. McElone had been especially grumpy when I’d called her back the night before, something about having to miss church because she needed to see me first thing. “There should be a law against saying something like that.”

“There is,” McElone informed her. “It’s called
slander
. If you want to sue him, feel free.”

“I don’t want to sue Tom Donovan,” I told McElone. “But if you know what he told you isn’t true, why are we here?”

“I’m trying to figure out why he’d implicate you,” the detective answered. “And the question I keep coming back to is: What was the point of getting Mrs. Crosby up to the Ocean Wharf to show her a bad magic show? I mean, did they really think that was going to kill her? And what has that got to do with you?”

I sat there for a moment, expecting her to go on, but she didn’t. “You think I have answers for all that?” I asked.

“I was hoping you might have answers for
some
of it,” McElone said.

“Here’s what I know,” I told her. “I know I met Arlice Crosby exactly three days ago, and we struck up a friendly acquaintance. She expressed an interest in coming to my house that night for a séance, and I invited her.”