Old Haunts Read online

  Praise for E. J. Copperman’s

  Haunted Guesthouse Mysteries

  An Uninvited Ghost

  “[A] triumph…The humor is delightful…If you like ghost stories mixed with your mystery, try this Jersey Shore mystery.”

  —Lesa’s Book Critiques

  “Funny and charming, with a mystery which has a satisfying resolution, and an engaging protagonist who is not easily daunted…Highly recommended.”

  —Spinetingler Magazine

  “Each page brings a new surprise…This series is one to follow. Craftily written and enjoyable.”

  —The Romance Readers Connection

  “Fabulous!…An Uninvited Ghost is something classic with a modern twist.”

  —Panda Reads

  “There are several series out now featuring protagonists who can interact with ghosts. Some are good, but this one is the best I’ve read. Alison’s spectral companions are reminiscent of Topper’s buddies, funny and stubborn and helpful when they want to be…I look forward to Alison’s next spooky adventure.”

  —Over My Dead Body

  “E. J. Copperman is certainly wonderful at weaving a great mystery. From the very get-go, readers are in for a treat that will leave them guessing until the final chapter…Alison Kerby is a wonderful character…If you love a great mystery like I do, I highly recommend getting this book.”

  —Once Upon A Romance

  Night of the Living Deed

  “Witty, charming and magical.”

  —The Mystery Gazette

  “A fast-paced, enjoyable mystery with a wisecracking but, no-nonsense, sensible heroine…Readers can expect good fun from start to finish, a great cast of characters and new friends to help Alison adjust to her new life. It’s good to have friends—even if they’re ghosts.”

  —The Mystery Reader

  “A delightful ride…The plot is well developed, as are the characters, and the whole is funny charming and thoroughly enjoyable.”

  —Spinetingler Magazine

  “A bright and lively romp through haunted-house repair!”

  —Sarah Graves, author of the Home Repair Is Homicide Mysteries

  “[A] wonderful new series…[A] laugh-out-loud, fast-paced and charming tale that will keep you turning pages and guessing until the very end.”

  —Kate Carlisle, New York Times bestselling author of the Bibliophile Myseries

  “Fans of Charlaine Harries and Sarah Graves will relish this original, laugh-laden paranormal mystery…[A] sparkling first entry in a promising new series.”

  —Julia Spencer-Fleming, Anthony and Agatha award-winning author of One Was a Solider

  “Night of the Living Deed could be the world’s first screwball mystery. You’ll die laughing and then come back a very happy ghost.”

  —Chris Grabenstein, Anthony and Agatha award-winning author

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by E. J. Copperman

  NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEED

  AN UNINVITED GHOST

  OLD HAUNTS

  Old Haunts

  E. J. COPPERMAN

  BERKLEY PRIME CRIME, NEW YORK

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

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  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,

  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  OLD HAUNTS

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / February 2012

  Copyright © 2012 by Jeffrey Cohen.

  Cover illustration by Dominick Finelle.

  Cover design by Judith Lagerman.

  Interior text design by Kristin del Rosario.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  EISBN: 9781101560075

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  To Cosmo, George and Marion,

  but also to Jessica, Josh and Eve, who

  are the best there ever were

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I am, you should know, absolutely grateful to the readers of the Haunted Guesthouse Mysteries. Everyone who’s ever read and enjoyed any of my books—consider me a friend. Anyone who’s ever read and gotten in touch to tell me how much you liked it, I am in your debt.

  To my author buddies: Julia Spencer-Fleming, Jennifer Stanley (in any of her incarnations), Lorraine Bartlett (in any of her incarnations), Chris Grabenstein, Rosemary Harris, Leann Sweeney, Jack Getze, Jeff Markowitz, Kate Carlisle, Roberta Rogow, Meredith Cole, Jane Cleland and anyone whose name I’m blanking on at this moment—you are incredibly generous and open. I only hope I’m half as good a friend.

  At the risk of sounding like a broken record (for those who remember records), my eternal gratitude to my editor, the incomparable Shannon Jamieson Vazquez, who always tortures me with my mistakes by being right about each and every one and inspiring me to come up with better solutions. I love you dearly, Shannon, and someday, I’ll get you for making me work so hard.

  Major-league thanks to the indefatigable Josh Getzler, of the Hannigan Salky Getzler Agency, for being an agent who is honest, supportive, dedicated and amiable, which doesn’t sound like much (no, wait—actually it sounds like quite a bit!) but is very rare among humans and extremely valuable. Thanks once again to Christina Hogrebe, who is all those things too, and who got this whole ball rolling to begin with.

  Long-overdue thanks to Dominic
k Finelle, the artist who creates the Haunted Guesthouse covers, and Judith Lagerman, executive art director at The Berkley Publishing Group, who developed the design and overall look of the series. Without the two of you, I’m sure not nearly as many people would have stopped to take a look.

  If this is the first book of mine you’ve read, welcome. If it’s the ninth, the sixth or the third, thanks for sticking around. Thanks for taking the trip with me. Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Tell total strangers. And know that I’m with you there, every step of the way.

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  One

  “Careful!” I said. All right, shouted. “We can’t afford to drop this.”

  It wasn’t so much that the sheet of wallboard Maxie, Paul and I were holding up was so expensive it couldn’t be replaced; it was more that hauling another heavy sheet up here in the attic of my massive Victorian home and guesthouse would be enormously difficult.

  Renovating the attic into a bedroom for my ten-year-old daughter, Melissa, during breaks from my duties as hostess and overall ringleader of the house at 123 Seafront Avenue had seemed like a good idea when I’d come up with it in April—it would give Liss a little privacy from the flow of guests in the house, and would free up another bedroom downstairs to rent out, thus generating more income. It had seemed like a practical and logical idea. In April.

  Now it was July on the New Jersey Shore, and the attic was not yet air-conditioned. Heat, in case you haven’t heard, rises. It was about 15,000 degrees up here, even with the windows open.

  Sometimes, my creative instincts overcome my common sense. I really should watch out for that.

  “You can’t afford to drop it,” Maxie answered. “It’s not our money.”

  “No, it’s not,” I agreed. “But you were in favor of this plan, and practically forced me into it. So if you don’t want the construction to go on indefinitely—”

  “It wouldn’t matter to me,” Maxie cut me off. “I’ve got nothing but time.”

  That was true. Paul and Maxie were going to stay in the house for a very long time.

  They were dead.

  Perhaps I should explain.

  Paul Harrison and Maxie Malone had both died in my house, a little less than a year before Melissa and I moved in. They’d been murdered, and although there’s quite a story involved with that, it’s been told elsewhere, at length. Suffice it to say, they seemed bound to my property, and I was, in essence, stuck with them.

  When I finalized my divorce from Melissa’s father, whom I charitably call The Swine, I bought this great big old house, knowing it was in need of repairs in pretty much every room. But I didn’t know it was haunted. It wasn’t until a rather questionable accident gave me a massive headache and the ability to communicate with my two nonpaying boarders that I gained that information. When I’d discovered my mother and my daughter had actually been able to see them all along, I had been relieved that I wasn’t going insane, but not that pleased Mom and Melissa had been keeping their abilities from me all those years. Turns out that though most living people can’t see ghosts, obviously, most of the females in my family can—I was the rare exception, until recently. Go figure. My mother and Melissa could see pretty much every ghost they encountered, and my abilities were developing slowly.

  Anyway, today I had an almost-full roster of guests downstairs, a heavy sheet of wallboard I was trying to attach to the studs on a slant, and I was putting my resident ghosts to work hanging drywall.

  “Just a couple seconds longer,” I told the ghosts as I secured this particular sheet in place with my cordless drill. Maxie seemed not to be exerting any energy at all, but Paul was visibly flagging—his ability to interact with physical objects was improving, but he was not able to do it as well as Maxie. There don’t seem to be any “rules” regarding ghosts—it’s not like they all have the same abilities, apparently. Paul tells me that some ghosts can roam freely, and I’ve seen that happen, but the two of them couldn’t leave my property. They didn’t know why. And we haven’t been able to figure out why some dead people show up as ghosts and others don’t. (The whole “unfinished business” thing is a good theory, but there seem to be a ton of exceptions.)

  Frankly, the whole afterlife didn’t seem very well organized, in my opinion.

  “I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to hang on,” Paul said, “breathing” heavily. And sure enough, a second later his fingers seemed to fly up into the wallboard—the ghost equivalent of dropping something.

  Luckily, Maxie was stronger and more “solid.” “I’ve got it,” she said, “but don’t take all day.”

  The drywall screws went in fairly easily—if you do something enough times in your life, you get good at it—and then I could tell my two nonalive assistants to relax. Once all the wallboard was hung in the room, I could work joint compound into the cracks and the screw holes, and after sanding (my least favorite part), I’d paint the room. Assuming Melissa ever decided on a color she liked.

  I checked the wallboard for fit, and it was fine; a quarterinch short on the bottom, but the wainscoting I was planning to add would more than compensate for that. The next piece we hung would have to fit around the window I’d installed the week before, so I began to measure for the fifth time, despite having memorized the dimensions. I’m never comfortable until I can actually see everything fit in its final state.

  “What are you thinking about for the ceiling?” Maxie asked. Maxie was trying to be an interior designer when she died, and still has opinions. Since she couldn’t go anywhere but my house, all her opinions were about 123 Seafront. You can’t possibly imagine how thrilling that was to me.

  “The ceiling?” I asked, as if I didn’t know what she meant. I was stalling for time. Typically, the way these things work is that I suggest a traditional—but classy—design element, Maxie scoffs and counters with something that sounds outrageous and absurd, and I reject it. Then I think about it for a moment, realize she’s actually on to something, and end up grudgingly doing things Maxie’s way. We have a slightly dysfunctional relationship, but it works for us. Which I suppose technically makes it functional.

  “Yeah. That thing that hangs over the rest of the room—remember?” Maxie thought she was witty. Spending eternity with a witty ghost was probably some kind of Chinese curse.

  “I figured I’d just paint it white,” I said. There was no use in trying to delay the inevitable. “It’s already pitched at an interesting angle; that should be enough of a visual statement.” I braced myself for the coming withering condescension.

  It never came. “You’re probably right,” Maxie said. “The dimensions of the room are the feature. It would be a mistake to add too many elements to that.”

  “You’re agreeing with me?” I asked. “How does that work into our usual dynamic?”

  We were both distracted by the sound of the doorbell. I have an old-fashioned one on the house, loud, and even up here, it was as clear as a…what it was.

  The idea that someone was using the doorbell was odd; the front door was unlocked until all my guests were inside at night, and on a hot afternoon like this, it was as likely a
s not to have been left wide open so as to better allow out the conditioned air and drive up my energy bill.

  With two flights of stairs between me and the front door, the prospect of traipsing all the way downstairs to find a meter reader or misguided UPS deliveryman was less than appealing. Especially since I was soaked in sweat from spending my afternoon performing construction in an un-air-conditioned attic.

  “Would you mind taking a look and seeing who that is?” I asked Paul. The ghosts, after all, don’t have to worry about things like walls and ceilings—they zip right through solid objects—and don’t so much walk as glide through the air. Going downstairs was hardly an exertion for Paul.

  But he shifted his gaze to Maxie. “Would you do it, Maxie?”

  “Why me?”

  Paul raised an eyebrow. “Because I went the last fifteen times,” he said.

  “What are we, six years old?” But Maxie disappeared through the floor, not looking in any special hurry. I’d probably end up having to go down there myself anyway.

  I gave Paul a significant look as soon as Maxie left. “Okay, what was that all about?” I asked him. “You didn’t ask her to go downstairs because of some juvenile scoring system. You wanted her out of the room.”

  Paul looked away. His polite Canadian upbringing and his British roots probably made him feel embarrassed for having emotions.

  “I have a favor to ask,” he said, unable to make eye contact. My mind immediately raced through the possibilities of things a deceased person could ask me to do…

  Oh, no. Not that.

  This part is complicated: Before my guesthouse was officially open for business, I was approached by a man named Edmund Rance, representing a firm called Senior Plus Tours, which books tours with “special experiences” for senior citizens. Rance had heard the rumors of hauntings at my house and asked specifically for eerie, ghostly happenings at least twice a day to astound his clientele.