The Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum (A Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum Mystery) (4 page)

He winked. “Got it. I see why you haven’t told Mom. She’d brag to all her friends.”

I laughed feebly. “So how’s Moscow?”

“That’s the second time you’ve asked me.”

“Are you going to make me go for thirds?”

“Nothing’s changed. The city reeks of money, power, and organized crime. It was exciting at first, but now … Let’s say it’s good to be home. You know how it is.”

“Yeah.” God, what had I done? Why had I come home? I should have done what they’d asked and kept my job. But no, I had to get indignant. I had to have principles. I had to be an idiot.

I had to pull myself together. “Speaking of home, how long are you here for?”

“Three weeks. I might make a run down to San Diego to visit friends, but I’ve got to get back in time for a joint U.S.-Russian exhibit the embassy is sponsoring. Moscow has a lively surreal art scene.”

“I’ll bet.”

“So how about I take you out to lunch? Hey, remember that wacky paranormal museum? If it’s still open, want to go take a look at it for old time’s sake?”

“It’s closed today,” I said repressively.

His brows drew together. “On a Friday? That’s weird. Oh well, we can do it some other time.” Draping one arm around my shoulders, he grabbed his leather bomber jacket off the back of the chair. “Lunch it is.”

four

At nine thirty Saturday
morning, I slunk into the Paranormal Museum. It had been hard keeping the museum from my brother. He’s one of those men who’s good at getting other people talking. And he really listens. The big jerk. But I’d managed to route him away from any discussion of my new “work.”

And now it was time for me to get to work. I felt a little nervous.

This was my first real chance to examine the museum. The walls were
white-paneled
, their ornate moldings painted shiny black. Two doors in the right wall led to other rooms. Opposite them hung that plastic barrier, and the gap in the wall that led to the tea room. The floor was a
white-and
-black checkerboard of linoleum tiles. A rocking chair stood in one corner.
Glass-enclosed
shelves filled with haunted objects lined the rear wall. It looked like an undertaker’s ice cream parlor.

The only thing that could have completed the grim effect would have been Christy’s chalk (or taped) outline on the floor. But chalk outlines were for the movies. Today’s police had cameras to record the scene.

GD Cat made a Slinky of himself, dropping from a high shelf lined with
old-timey
photos onto the floor. He approached me, his strut confident, his meow imperial. Interpreting this as a demand for food, I searched the cupboard beneath the cash register. Next to a dusty and unopened bottle of Kahlua was a bag of kibble and a metal bowl. I filled it and placed it near a bowl of water by the rocking chair.

He turned his back on me and ate, teeth crunching.

I picked up the water bowl to freshen it. And then I realized what was missing: a bathroom. If Adele sealed the whole wall between the tea room and the museum, I’d be on daily liquid restrictions.

I rummaged through the drawers and found a bundle of tickets. Beside them was a small key that fit the
old-fashioned
register. It was ten o’clock, and I was ready to go.

Walking to the plastic drapes that separated the museum from the
soon-to
-be tea room, I peered through. A dark stain spread across the bare concrete. So the police hadn’t eradicated the signs of the murder. The
clean-up
was left to us. Shivering, I retreated into the museum.

No customers beat down the door, so I wandered into the two other rooms that constituted my temporary empire. One had shelves filled with antique dolls, their eyes staring sightlessly, their gowns faded. A sign above the door declared this the Creepy Doll Room. It certainly creeped me out.

The Fortune Telling Room fascinated me. Cases filled with Ouija boards, tarot cards, divining rods, and other tools of the trade ringed the room. I ran one finger over an odd
wheel-and
-pulley device and wiped the dust off on my jeans. In the center of the room stood a lightweight Victorian séance table:
circa 1889, France
, said the card. Against one wall was a spirit cabinet from the 1870s. The placard beside it didn’t explain much. Were spirits supposed to live in the cabinet? I opened its doors. A bench had been built inside, against the cabinet’s
right-hand
wall. It didn’t look comfortable, even for a ghost. On the wall beside the cabinet hung a framed Houdini poster:
Do Spirits Return?

Was the poster real or a replica? I’d need to do a thorough inventory of the museum to understand exactly what Adele had and its true value. She’d need that information if she ever found a buyer.

I returned to the main room and the cash register. The plastic sheeting rustled. GD Cat sat in front of the plastic where Christy’s body had lain, licking his paws, unconcerned.

“I guess that means we’re ghost free,” I said.

He paused, fixing his
green-eyed
gaze on me, and then returned to his ablutions.

I unpeeled the information card taped to the seat of the
paint-flecked
rocking chair. It read:
A presence has been felt in this chair donated by Gerald Winters. Visitors have reported seeing the chair rock by itself.

I raised my brows. It seemed silly, but I plowed on, getting acquainted with the objects d’spook under my purview: A colorfully painted magic scroll from Ethiopia believed to entrap evil spirits—
How many are trapped inside? And what will happen if they’re released?
A tattered copy of an occult journal from the nineteenth century. A Victorian mourning ring said to attract the ghost of the woman whose hair was woven into the band.

The museum was an Aladdin’s cave of the paranormal. I had to admit, it was an impressive collection.

The bell above the door jingled, and I scooted behind the cash register. Two Goth teenagers sauntered in, their faces unnaturally pale, their hair unnaturally black. The boy made a
V-sign
with his fingers, and I handed him two tickets.

“That will be …” I scanned down the list of instructions and choked. “Twenty dollars for the two of you.”

His girlfriend drifted into the Fortune Telling Room. He dug a handful of crumpled bills from the front pocket of his black jeans and handed me the money. I untangled the damp mass, and he followed Girl Goth.

“You gave me too much.” I held out a fiver.

He didn’t look back, waving a hand negligently over his shoulder. “Keep it.”

Shrugging, I dropped the cash in the tip jar. I turned the jar and read the label:
Lunch Money for GD Cat
.
Our ghost detecting cat has been known to spot ghosts! Watch where he gazes!

Looking at the cat, I raised a brow. “Really?”

GD sneezed and followed the Goths into the Fortune Telling Room.

The plastic sheeting rattled, and a man in loose denims and a torn,
paint-stained
tee bounded into the room. From the tool belt slung low about his hips, I deduced he was Adele’s contractor, Dieter Finkielkraut. His brown hair was spiked as if he’d plugged his finger into an electrical socket, and his brown eyes gleamed. Tanned and muscled, it wasn’t hard to see how brokenhearted Adele had found him appealing.

“Hi! Are you Mad Dog Kosloski?”

I ground my teeth. Adele and her big mouth. Would high school never die?

He loped across the checkerboard floor, his hand extended. “I’m Dieter Finkielkraut, Adele’s contractor. She said you’d be opening the museum today. How’s it going?” He pumped my hand. His palm was rough from manual labor, but his grip was gentle.

“Two customers so far,” I said.

“I’d planned to start up the circular saw. Want me to hold off until they go?”

“Theoretically, customers will be coming and going all day, so there’s no point in delaying the noise. If anyone complains, I’ll tell them it’s the ghost of a lumberjack.”

“Hey, do you know if Adele’s coming in today? I wanted to ask her about some molding.”

The Goths wandered into the Creepy Doll Room.

“I’m not sure. The murder might have changed her schedule.”

“Murder?” His eyes twinkled. “Is she planning a murder mystery party for charity?”

I blinked. This was a small town, and murder was big news. I’d have thought word of Thursday night’s death would be all over. “You haven’t heard? Christy Huntington was found dead inside the Paranormal Museum.”

His eyes dulled. “Christy Huntington? Here? When?”

“Thursday night. Were you here on Thursday?”

“I’m here nearly every weekday.”

“What time did you leave on Thursday?” I’d no intention of playing detective, but finding Christy’s body had left me with an ugly, vulnerable hollow in my gut. I wanted things to be okay, for Adele to be in the clear. And I wanted to know why, if Dieter was here every weekday, he’d missed the cops in the tea room on Friday.

“I packed up Thursday around four thirty and headed up to Tahoe to get some snowboarding in on Friday. Just got back.”

“Did you see Christy when you left on Thursday?”

He shook his head. “The only person I saw was your grumpy neighbor, the biker.”

“If you just got back, I guess that explains why the police haven’t talked to you,” I said, uneasy. But why hadn’t the police at least called Dieter to set an appointment for an interview? He was a potential witness.

“Why would the cops want to talk to me?”

“The body was found here Thursday night. I’d imagine they’d want to know when you left, to help figure out when she died, or if you’d seen her around the museum. We had to tell them you had a key. One of the cops seemed to recognize your name.”

He hitched his jeans. “Oh? Who was it?”

“A detective named Laurel Hammer.”

He grinned. “Oh yeah. Me and Laurel go way back to her pre–Johnny Law days.”

“Were you staying at a hotel?”

“Why?”

“It’s been ages since I’ve been to Tahoe,” I said, deliberately vague. Oh yeah, I definitely had a flair for detection.

“Well, I was at a friend’s cabin,” Dieter said. “He gave me the key.”

“You went alone?”

“Yeah, there’s no special lady in my life.”

Drat. So it would be tough to verify his story. Dieter had a key to the tea room—he could have killed Christy and then left for Tahoe, but what was his motive? “Did you know Christy well?”

“No. She’s outta my league. I mean,
was
outta my league.”

We stared at each other.

“How was the snow?” I asked.

“Icy.”

My conversational gambit exhausted, Dieter departed. The whine of a circular saw pierced the air, and the Goths fled the museum.

A jowly businessman in a threadbare suit sidled through the front door. A customer!

I smiled, reaching for the tickets. “Welcome to the Paranormal Museum.”

“Uh, yeah. Is Dieter here?”

Sourly, I pointed toward the plastic curtains with my pencil.

“Thanks.” He hurried through them.

B
etween researching the museum’s assorted oddities online, I relieved visitors of their ticket money. Saturday should have been a big day for sales. Although there was a steady trickle of guests, I couldn’t see earning a living off the place if I bought it. Maybe if it had a gift shop, or a way to bring in repeat visitors. I could put a round table in the center of the room with things for sale. Or Dieter could build some shelves near the cash register to sell tarot cards and stuff. What that other stuff might be, I had no idea. Paranormal Museum postcards? Did people even send postcards anymore? And why was I thinking about this when the odds that I’d buy the place were practically nil?

A
weedy-looking
man in wrinkled khakis and a gray button-
up shirt slouched in. His youthful face was carved in a hangdog
expression, his single mark of distinction. Otherwise, he was Mr. Average—average height, average weight, sandy hair, brown eyes. He’d be an ideal bank robber, his identity fading into a million other averages.

I smiled. “Welcome to the Paranormal Museum. Tickets are—”

“I’m not here for a ticket.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m here to see where Christy died.”

“Then you’ll have to leave.” An ache throbbed behind my left eyeball. I’d already driven off two reporters. The P.T. Barnum in me told me that no publicity was bad publicity, but it seemed icky, and Adele had enough problems.

The circular saw screamed. I winced, regretting that I’d told Dieter to go ahead with the work.

“You don’t understand. Christy was my …” He gulped, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

“Your …?”

“We were friends,” he said. “I can’t believe she’s gone. It’s denial, I guess, the first stage of grief. Do you know what happened?”

“The last reporter told me he was her brother. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten to remove his press pass from the Stockton Crab Feed.”

The man pulled a wallet from his back pocket and dug out a business card:
Sam Leavitt, Esquire
.

So Sam was a lawyer. If the business card was legit. He looked like a harmless young professional, clean cut in business casual.

“Wow. I’ve never met a squire before,” I said. “Is your horse parked outside?”

“It means—”

“I know what ‘esquire’ means.”

He swallowed again. “Christy was my girlfriend,” he said in a low voice.

My breath hitched. His girlfriend? Could I be any more insensitive? But what about Christy’s engagement to Michael? “Christy told me she was seeing someone else.”

“My girlfriend once,” he clarified. “Then she dumped me for Michael St. James.”

I leaned closer, feeling an unwilling twinge of sympathy.

“I couldn’t blame her,” he said. “He’s rich. Successful. I’m a struggling lawyer, just starting out. At first, Christy and I had so much in common. And then her law career took off and mine flatlined. We were doomed.”

He leaned closer. His breath smelled of onions and Tabasco. “What happened?” he asked, his fists clenched. “Were you the one who found her? If I find the person who did this …”

The museum had gone quiet, and I realized we were alone. I looked for something to put between me and Sam besides the counter, not liking the glitter in his eyes. If Christy had jilted him, had Sam killed her for revenge? I shifted the cat’s tip jar in front of me as a barrier.

“I don’t know what happened.” I stared at the door, willing a customer to walk in, anyone. But the museum remained depressingly empty. Even the cat had abandoned me. “What do you think happened?”

He sagged. “I don’t know. Christy was so sensitive and smart.”

I bit the inside of my cheek. Smart and sensitive were not two adjectives I’d have applied to Christy, but I hadn’t known her well. “If you have information, you should talk to the police.”

He laughed. “Are you kidding? What do you think they’ll do?”

The answer to that seemed obvious. Was there something I was missing? “They’re investigating the case.”

Brow wrinkling, he looked around the museum. “I can’t believe she got killed in a place like this. Christy was very conscious of appearances. She would have hated being found in a paranormal museum.”