An Uninvited Ghost (34 page)

In the front room, just before the stairs, I saw something standing in the shadows now that most of the lights in the house were out. I didn’t remember putting anything there, and as I drew closer, I realized it was the large plastic easel.

I shook my head. I hadn’t put that there, and neither had anyone else. Could Dolores Santiago have tricked us all? Was she still around? Would there be some threatening, taunting message spelled out on the board when I reached it?

“Paul,” I said quietly. No one appeared.

I was afraid to look, but there was nothing else to do. So I approached the easel very slowly—I wasn’t sure, after all, that it wouldn’t blow up or that some hideous weapon wouldn’t leap out of it. And then I saw that there
was
a message spelled out in the black plastic letters. Right next to the red bandana, which was hanging out of the drawer where the letters were kept.

The message read:

On Tuesday, Linda Jane and I spent some time on the porch, me with a headache from too much wine the night before, talking about what had taken place over the previous few days. By the time she left, she was actually open to the idea of returning with another tour if Senior Plus were to ask sometime in the future.

That afternoon, after we’d had a chance to clean up, Melissa and I welcomed two new guests, a married couple, to the room
Down the Shore
had occupied. They seemed a very nice couple, although they got a glimpse of the four o’clock Ghost-o-rama when I wasn’t quick enough to get them out of the house, and they seemed . . . amazed, in a good way. The remaining guests from the previous week barely looked up.

The Senior Plus guests were all gone by Wednesday (the day before Bobby was to come and repair the pool table, much to Warren’s chagrin), after having filled out their evaluation sheets. But there was only one I couldn’t resist reading, and her answers were shocking. According to the scores Bernice Antwerp had given my guesthouse, she’d never stayed in such a wonderful place in her life—she specifically cited “that lovely H-Bomb girl”—and would be thrilled to come back again.

I wasn’t sure if that made me happy or scared.

The Joneses had left early Wednesday morning for points unknown. Two months later, I’d see photos of them on every front page in the country and strain to remember what they looked like when they checked in and out, the only times I’d seen their faces. It turned out that the gentleman was actually Senator Not-Jones and the lady was
not
Mrs. Senator Not-Jones. Luckily, they’d been spotted in a vacation spot other than my guesthouse, so no reporters came stomping by. Except Phyllis, who found the whole thing hilarious.

She ran a number of articles on Arlice Crosby’s murder but never printed a definitive piece on the solution to the mystery. After interviewing me, Melissa, Mom, Jeannie, Tony, Linda Jane and the entire
Down the Shore
cast, Phyllis pronounced the story “too confused” and ended up writing that Arlice had died of an overdose of medication for her diabetes, which was technically true.

By Wednesday evening, Myrna and Phil were the only official guests left until the weekend, and they had gone out for dinner, saying they wouldn’t be back until quite late, as they were going to a restaurant somewhere on Long Beach Island. The TV crew was scuttling about somewhere on the beach filming “pickups,” Trent had said. I didn’t ask what that meant.

He was still smarting because Detective McElone had confiscated his footage from the night of the second séance, saying it was “pertinent to an ongoing investigation,” one which, Trent knew, was unlikely ever to be closed, so his footage was unlikely ever to get returned.

We had ordered a pizza for dinner that night and sat around the kitchen table—Mom, Melissa and me—waiting for our two resident spirits, due by invitation. Maxie had grumbled all day, in one of her moods, and had balked at being asked to join us, but I’d insisted, and told her it was a matter of life and afterlife.

Paul, meanwhile, had shown up as requested, on time and eager to hear what might be of concern. I think he believed I was about to undertake another investigation and could barely contain his excitement.

“So what is this all about?” he asked as soon as he popped through the wall. “Something you need to ask me about?”

“Wait until Maxie shows up,” I said. “I don’t want to have to say everything twice.” Melissa hid a smile. Ten-year-olds are terrible at hiding their feelings, except when you wish they wouldn’t.

“Maxie?” Paul seemed confused. “Maxie doesn’t usually have much to do with . . . Oh. Research.” Even if he weren’t transparent, I’d have been able to see the wheels in his head spinning: Maxie’s role in investigations was research, so I must want to talk to her about research. Paul, like many men, can be extremely singular in his thought process.

Speak of the ghostess, Maxie stuck her head through the ceiling right at that moment. “Do I really
have
to show up for this?” she asked. “I was doing something.”

“Yeah? What?”

She frowned. “Fine,” she moaned and dropped down through the ceiling, settling on the stove. “What’s the emergency?”

The three of us breathing people grinned, reached under our chairs, and pulled out paper hats and noisemakers. “Happy birthday, Maxie!” Melissa shouted as we put on our garish headgear and blew out ridiculous noises.

Maxie’s mouth opened and closed a few times. She sputtered. She flapped her hands a bit. She looked completely flabbergasted.

It was terrific.

“Why didn’t anybody tell me?” Paul immediately demanded. “I could have put on a silly hat, too.”

Melissa handed him an extra we had for exactly that purpose. “You know what a bad liar you are, Paul,” she told him. “You never could have kept the secret.”

Paul put on the hat and looked sheepish even before it rested in a point on his head. “It’s true,” he said. “Happy birthday, Maxie.”

Maxie had taken the opportunity to regain her composure. “Do I look any older?” she asked, posing like a very bad model.

“Not a day,” Mom answered.

“Let’s get this party started!” the guest of honor shouted. “Where are my presents?”

I tried to resist her demand for a minute, knowing I had an ace up my sleeve. “Wait,” I told her. “I have something for you in the other room.” I got up to walk to the door, then turned and looked at Maxie, who had an impish grin on her face. “And no fair peeking.”

I pushed the kitchen door open just a bit and said, “Okay.” Maxie’s mother, Kitty Malone, walked in, and her daughter’s face, already radiant, lit up a little more. “Mom,” she said quietly.

Kitty had been coming by periodically since I’d informed her that her deceased daughter was available for visiting, and the two now seemed to enjoy a warm relationship, as far as I could tell. Kitty walked in carrying a small box wrapped with pink paper.

“Hi, sweetie,” she said, looking in Paul’s direction because she could see the party hat. She can’t see or hear Maxie; they communicate through written notes. Paul took off his party hat and handed it to Maxie, so Kitty could look in the right direction. “I brought you a little something. You’re thirty years old today.” Her eyes teared up a little.

Maxie swooped down from the ceiling and gently took the box from Kitty. “Tell her I say thanks,” she said, wiping something from her eye. Melissa relayed the message.

It’s not easy shopping for a ghost, I’d discovered. They don’t need anything, really, and physical objects in the real world are hard for them to carry around. So I was interested to see what Kitty had brought her daughter.

Maxie, of course, tore through the paper like a buzz saw through fat-free margarine. Inside was a tiny jewelry box, which she opened. Her face went absolutely white (not a huge change, but noticeable), and her eyes barely managed to stay inside their sockets. “Oh my god,” she said quietly.

She turned the box for all of us to see. Inside was a ring in the pattern of a skull and crossbones. “Look,” she said. “Isn’t it awesome?”

“I remembered how much you loved it,” Kitty told her daughter. “I found it in your bed stand, and I figured you’d want it.”

Maxie swooped back down and hugged her mother. Kitty seemed to feel the embrace, and she smiled broadly. Maxie hovered down and stood next to her mother. “Nobody’s beating
that
,” she said. “But I can’t wait to see you try!”

“I was just about to get to that,” I said. “Melissa and I—”

There was a knock on the back door, and through the glass I could see a teenager holding two pizza boxes. I grabbed my wallet out of my tote bag, hanging on the back of my chair, and opened the door.

“Harbor Pizza,” the kid said. No kidding. I thought he was delivering very flat bowling balls in white boxes. “You the garlic or the pepperoni?”

“Garlic,” I said. “And by the way, it doesn’t do anything to ward off vampires.” I looked at Paul. “Does it?” He shrugged.

The kid handed me our pizza and I gave him enough money to cover the food, the tip and a little extra for putting up with that joke. Then I came back inside as he walked away with the second box.

“What about my present?” Maxie shouted.

“Oh, just a second,” I said, and then halfway from the back door to the table I stopped. “Just a . . .”

“What’s the matter?” My mother.

“Why’d he bring two pizzas?” I asked. “We only ordered one. Why’d he bring two?”

“He had a garlic and a pepperoni, and he didn’t know which one was ours,” Melissa said. “Can we have some now? I’m hungry.”

“He shouldn’t have had two,” I insisted. “Unless . . .” I put the pizza down on the table, and Melissa immediately dove on it before someone could tell her not to. I walked back to the door and looked.

The pizza delivery boy’s car was still there.

“Of course,” I said.

“Of course what?” Mom asked.

“Stay here,” I told her, opening the door. “Paul, want to come along?”

“What about my present?” Maxie demanded.

I walked out without answering. Sure enough, about a hundred yards away, I saw the kid from Harbor Pizza exiting one of the
Down the Shore
trailers. He walked back to his car and drove away.

“What’s going on?” Paul asked.

“The whole crew and the cast are on the beach,” I said. “But somebody ordered a pizza from—”

“Tiffney’s trailer,” Paul said, completing my sentence for me.

“Exactly.” There was no need to hurry, but I started to run toward the trailer, feeling like I’d better get there before Tiffney vanished. Again.

Once there, I knocked on the door. And sure enough, there was no answer. Tiffney was following her instructions to the letter. Well, almost.

“Come on, Tiffney, I know you’re in there,” I said loudly. “Let’s talk.”

“I’m not here,” Tiffney shouted from inside. “We can’t talk.”

That thing about not being the sharpest tool in the shed? Tiffney would need considerable honing to reach that status.

“You are there,” I said. “You just told me you’re not there. That means you’re there.”

The door opened, and there stood Tiffney, a little tomato sauce on her cheek, dressed in a pair of cutoff shorts and a
Down the Shore
T-shirt that had been washed many, many times.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“Good question,” Paul said, but of course she couldn’t hear him.

We went inside, where I also found the female camera operator sitting at the “kitchen” table, eating pizza. Tiffney offered me a slice, but I declined. I wanted to keep this brief, what with a birthday party for a ghost going on in my kitchen.

“Let me see if I can guess,” I said. “Once H-Bomb started complaining about you getting too big a role on the show, Trent decided to give her what she wanted, but to do it in a way that would make you a bigger star. Or that’s what he told you, right?”

“Yeah.” Tiffney chewed on her pizza (“I’m
really
hungry; do you mind?”). “He said if I disappeared, everybody would be looking for me, and the fans would go crazy wanting me back. But since the show doesn’t air for another couple months, we had to keep it real quiet. So Trent didn’t tell the police.”

“And he tried to hire me to find you, because he figured there’d be no danger you’d get found before he wanted to bring you back. Who else knows about this?”

Tiffney’s eyes looked up and to the right; this indicated she was thinking. “Everybody else in the cast except H-Bomb,” she said, meaning just the two guys. “Trent figured it would be better if she really thought I was gone.”

“I came along to film Tiff when she wasn’t in the trailer,” the camerawoman, whose name turned out to be Sandy, added. “I got her out on the beach, walking around, looking lost.”

“Was that where you were when the CSI team was searching the trailers?” I asked.

“I guess so,” Sandy answered. “I never saw them doing that, so we must have been out filming.”

“But not when she gave a homeless guy named Darryl her credit card as a humanitarian gesture.”

Sandy giggled. “Actually, that was me. Trent didn’t want Tiff out there with those guys, so I put on a blonde wig and worked a little magic with my figure. Those makeup people can do
anything
.”

“With the fan protests getting louder online, the pressure was on H-Bomb,” I thought out loud.

“Yeah,” Tiffney confirmed. “Trent wanted her not to know where I was.”

“Even more fun if Tiffney were a suspect,” I said so Paul could hear. “Because then the search for you, Tiffney, would be more intense, and the audience would know you were innocent. It builds drama. So Trent helped you put together that”—(inwardly, I shuddered a bit)—“mannequin to make it look like H-Bomb was threatening you just as you disappeared. Wasn’t that it?” I asked Tiffney.