A Wild Ghost Chase Read online

  “Native American,” Melissa corrected. I decided against pointing out that many of the same nations inhabited my native Canada as well. It didn’t seem the time.

  “Whatever. Anyway, if this kid was carrying an arrowhead, it was probably a boy,” Maxie suggested. “Girls don’t really have much use for those things.”

  I looked at Melissa, who seemed engrossed by the arrowhead. Clearly, she did not share Maxie’s assessment of the situation.

  Given the identification of the object, I could see some steps to take. “All right,” I said. “Maxie, if you could get online and see if you can make a more specific report on our arrowhead, perhaps we’ll see a clear path to finding its owner.” Maxie, who has an affinity for electronics and the ability to use them—not my forte in life, or in death, it turns out—has developed the research arm of Harrison Investigations, which is what I mentally call our collective detection efforts (not that I’ve shared the name with Maxie or Alison, both of whom might object, but it was my agency first). She doesn’t always relish the work, but she has shown a decided aptitude for it, and enjoys the reputation she has earned. Given her MO, I could expect that Maxie would grumble now, but do a very thorough job and then bask in the attention when she made her report.

  Sure enough, she sighed audibly. “Fine,” she moaned, drawing the one syllable out to seven. “What do you want to know?”

  “Which nation would have produced it, where it might have been discovered, what it was used for, and what its value might be in the current market. But when you’re finished using it as a referent in your work, make sure you give it back to me,” I said.

  Maxie looked at me a moment. “Why?” she asked.

  “Any clue is best kept safe, even if we don’t know why it might be important.”

  Maxie looked less than impressed. “Amazing, Holmes!” she said with a mock-British accent.

  Sometimes, my associates at Harrison Investigations don’t take the process as seriously as I do.

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, after Maxie and I participated in the afternoon “spook show” for Alison’s guests, rattling a few overhead lighting fixtures (enough to get them moving, but not so much as to cause them to crash to the floor) and banging drumsticks against the walls of the den while Maxie juggled some fruit we’d found on the kitchen table. The guests who had gathered for the occasion seemed quite pleased, and discussed the performance after we had finished, when they assumed we were no longer in the room.

  The reviews were favorable.

  Maxie usually retreats to a solitary spot after the spook shows—she is somewhat shy despite her outward brash appearance, and doesn’t relish contact with strangers—but today she indicated to me that there was something to discuss. Melissa noticed the gesture, too, and the three of us moved into the kitchen where the guests do not usually roam (Alison doesn’t serve food in the guesthouse—she says it’s because she’s not a good cook; I don’t remember the taste of food very well, so I will defer to her judgment on that).

  Out of sight from where Alison was answering questions about our activities from the crowd, Maxie reached into a cabinet where she stored Alison’s very old laptop computer, which had become Maxie’s by default. Alison keeps saying that she’s going to get a new computer soon, but hasn’t really made any effort to do so. She doesn’t always talk about it, but money is usually an issue; my guess is that Alison’s doing well enough to pay the bills, but without much extra to spare.

  “I found out a few things about that arrowhead,” she said as we waited for the ancient computer to boot up. “It’s a product of the Lenni-Lenape tribe, which lived pretty much all over New Jersey and New York, but like tourists today, they used to come down the shore to this area for the summer.”

  “Do you have an idea of the age of the stone?” I asked.

  “Well, the page I saw said that the Lennis didn’t last long after the Europeans showed up here, so that means they probably were gone altogether before the end of the eighteenth century.”

  “Wow,” Melissa said. “So it’s more than two hundred years old! Does that mean it’s really, really valuable?”

  Maxie shook her head. “There’s tons of these things,” she told Melissa. “You can’t get a lot for them.”

  “Perhaps this one has sentimental value,” I suggested. “If the person I saw in the closet wants it back badly enough, we can assume an attempt will be made to get it back.”

  Melissa’s eyes widened. “You think the kid who had it will come after it?” she asked.

  “That’s what I’m counting on.”

  Sure enough, the attempt was made that night, long after Melissa, Alison and all the guests had gone to their rooms to sleep. Ghosts don’t sleep; we’re never actually awake, so the effort to “sleep” would be pointless. We do sometimes become less active, often late at night because there is little to do at that time. Although I know that some spirits, especially those with anger issues, choose the quietest times in the middle of the night to be the most disruptive, simply out of spite against the living. Personally, I’ve never seen the point. If that person didn’t kill you, what axe have you to grind? Then again, Alison is probably a more understanding “host” than most.

  Maxie said she would keep watch on the outside of the house. She is considerably more transportable than I am, and had recently discovered she could move outside the bounds of the property line, something I am not yet able to do. But my guess was that she would set up her position on the roof, where she could watch from all sides at once. Maxie isn’t always practical, but she is intelligent.

  The fact that she hadn’t warned me when I heard someone in the library was, therefore, not an indication that Maxie had fallen down on the job, but that the spirit I’d seen in the closet had never actually left the house.

  From my position in the basement, I debated whether to follow the sound and confront the stranger, or wait until the child made him or herself known to me. On the one hand, the element of surprise could be an effective tool, but I did not want the spirit—especially if it was indeed a child—to become frustrated and disappointed, and give up the search. I chose to follow the sound and remain inconspicuous. I tucked the arrowhead medallion into the pocket of my pants and rose up through the basement ceiling into the hallway on the ground floor.

  The area was not completely dark; there is a window at the far end of the hallway at the entrance to the game room, and the opposite end leads to the den (a converted dining room with many windows). There was a bright moon, and my night vision has improved considerably since I took on this incarnation, so I could see fairly clearly up and down the hallway even without pulling out my penlight.

  No one was there. I stayed as still as I could until another faint sound, like that of shuffling objects, emerged from the game room.

  Of course. The young ghost had returned to the closet to retrieve the lost object. I rushed to the game room as quickly as possible. I no longer use my legs for locomotion so much as I do my mind; the will to move propels me much more than a physical effort.

  I kept my hand in my pocket, resting on the penlight, and barreled through the hallway wall into the back of the closet to block my young prey’s exit. As I passed through the wall, I pulled the penlight from my pocket, having already hit the switch to turn it on. Sure enough, the young ghost was there, looking startled and frightened.

  It was a boy, perhaps eight years old, with dark black hair, long over his forehead and on the sides. I couldn’t see him very well in this light, but his eyes were dark and wide. He was wearing a fringed vest that appeared to be something in the family of suede over a plain blue shirt, a beaded band around his forehead, and trousers made of a soft brown material. At first glance, I guessed he was of North American native descent.

  The boy turned to flee, but I reached out and got a grip on h
is arm. It takes some effort for people like me to interact physically with objects or people in the living world, but we are easily able to touch those like ourselves. I held on firmly without creating enough force to hurt him—yes, we can still feel pain under the right circumstances.

  “You don’t have to run,” I said. “I just want to talk.”

  Before the boy could answer, Maxie appeared at the other side of the closet, coming down through the ceiling. She was wearing cowboy boots, black jeans and a t-shirt whose legend read, “Sometimes Cowgirls DON’T Get The Blues.” “Aha!” she shouted. “You caught him!”

  The young spirit shook with fright, and I fixed my gaze on Maxie to get her attention. “There’s no need to shout,” I said quietly. “We just want to talk to our young friend here.”

  “Oh! Oh, yeah, sure we do,” Maxie said. Subtlety is not high in her skill set.

  “What’s your name, son?” I asked the boy, trying to lure his astonished stare away from Maxie’s shirt and toward my eyes, which I meant to look concerned and kindly. But he would not look at me. “Who are you?”

  “I am Eagle of the Sun,” he said. As he spoke, his face took on a more composed and defiant attitude, but his voice betrayed his continued tension. “Let go of my arm.”

  “Not until I’m sure you won’t fly away, but we should get out of this closet,” I told him. I maintained my grip on his forearm and pulled him, gently, into the game room.

  “Eagle of the Sun?” Maxie asked once we were in better light.

  “My people would call me Antinanco,” the boy told her, sounding less frightened. “I changed the words to fit your language.”

  “Are your people the Lenni-Lenape?” I said.

  “Lenni-Len-AH-pay,” he corrected. “We are the Human Beings.” I was aware (having seen a film called Little Big Man) that some native tribes referred to themselves that way, so I nodded.

  “You speak pretty good English,” Maxie said, her eyes narrowing.

  “I have been on this property or near to it for more than two hundred winters,” the boy told her. “I have watched many people. I have had a lot of time to learn. Do you want to know who Taylor Swift is?”

  Before Maxie (who looked a little stunned) could answer, the lights in the game room came on, and we all turned toward the door. If it was a guest, there wouldn’t really be a problem, since we wouldn’t be visible. But instead, Melissa walked into the room, her eyes on Eagle of the Sun, whose arm I was still holding.

  “You found him!” she said.

  “You shouldn’t be awake,” I said. I try to be an authority figure to Melissa when Alison is not in the room.

  “This one can see us?” the boy asked.

  I nodded. “You have nothing to fear from Melissa. Melissa, this is Eagle of the Sun. He says he has been here, or near here, for a very long time.”

  The boy stood a little straighter. “I am Antinanco,” he said, staring past all of us as if at attention.

  “Nice to meet you,” Melissa answered. She turned her gaze back to me. “I heard sounds down here. Did you give Ant-in-anco his arrowhead back?”

  The boy’s eyes widened. “You have it? You have my medallion? Give it back!”

  “Just a moment,” I told him. “If I let go of your arm, will you promise not to leave? I have questions for you.”

  “Give me back my arrowhead!” the young native insisted. “It’s mine, and you stole it!”

  “I’ll give it back to you if you answer my questions,” I said. “That’s all you have to do.”

  Antinanco’s mouth, clenched in a frustrated pout, opened just wide enough for him to say, “I won’t fly away.” I released his arm, and true to his word, he stayed put. “Now give me back my arrowhead.”

  “As soon as you’ve answered me. First of all, if you’ve been here all this time, why haven’t we seen you before? Maxie and I have been in this house for more than two years.”

  The boy floated up a foot or so, bringing his head to about level with my shoulder, a move I found significant. He wanted to be on equal footing with the adults, but couldn’t quite bring himself to a height that would be face-to-face, and wouldn’t go eye-to-eye with me, either. He looked at the wall. His nose twitched. “I’m really good at hiding.”

  I shook my head. “You’re not getting your arrowhead if you lie to me,” I told him. “No one is that good at hiding, not even a two-hundred-year-old native ghost.”

  To his credit, Antinanco chose not to argue that he’d been truthful. “I don’t always stay here,” he said. “My people travel all over this area. I am not bound to the earth, so I move over it.”

  I looked at Maxie, who had done the research on the Lenni-Lenapes, and she nodded. That checked out. “Why are you here now?” she asked. “Isn’t this really the summer area for your people? It’s kind of late in the year for you to be down the shore.”

  Antinanco, now seemingly pleased with the attention he was getting, smiled and stood a little straighter, although his feet were well off the floor. “I do not travel with my people,” he said. “I go where I please.” That really wasn’t an answer to her question, but Maxie did not choose to press him on it.

  Melissa, however, had looked concerned at the boy’s last comment. “You travel alone?” she asked. “Where are your mom and dad?”

  All of a sudden, Antinanco’s bravado seemed to fall from him; he stuck out his lower lip and his shoulders slouched. “I have not seen them since I closed my eyes with the smallpox,” he said quietly. “My father was a great hunter, and was not in the camp. My mother’s face is the last thing I remember seeing. Then I was alone.”

  “So you haven’t seen your mom in two hundred years?” Melissa looked shocked; the idea clearly disturbed her. “I mean, she must have . . . she must be . . .”

  “I am sure she has closed her eyes forever, too,” the young native said. “But she has not found me, and I have not found her. Perhaps she lived long after me, and forgot that she had a son called Antinanco.” He seemed on the verge of tears, and so did Melissa.

  “Mothers don’t forget,” Maxie told the boy. “She’d never forget. If she hasn’t found you, it’s because she doesn’t know how.” Maxie saw her mother about once a week even now, although Kitty Malone did not see her daughter. But she knew when Maxie was in the room, and the two of them had long conversations on computer screens and yellow legal pads.

  “She knew me only eight winters,” Antinanco responded, but it was clear he didn’t believe the implications of what he was saying.

  Melissa, her eyes moist, looked at me. “We need to find Antinanco’s mother,” she said.

  The young native, who was looking at the floor, lifted his head quickly to stare at her, although not in the eye. He looked at Melissa’s feet. “You can do that?” he asked.

  Find a native North American woman who’d been dead for centuries? With no historical records, no idea of an accurate time period, no way to get out of this house and, without involving Alison (which seemed unlikely given her current level of activity), no eyes, ears and legs on the outside? It was impossible.

  “I don’t think . . .” I began.

  “Paul, you’re a private investigator,” Melissa said, her tone mysteriously approximating her mother’s, which she knew made it harder for me to resist. “You have a client who needs you and an exciting puzzle that no other detective has ever had before. Are you going to float there and tell me you’re turning that opportunity down?”

  The Kerby women share one trait besides the ability to see ghosts like me—they are single-mindedly determined when they set their minds on something. Trying to dissuade one of them is like trying to talk a hurricane out of decimating your town.

  “You can find missing people?” Antinanco asked me.

  “Sometimes,” I said. “I don’
t see how it can be done in this situation, but yes, that was my job when I was alive.”

  “People give you things to do that? They trade with you?”

  I guess that was how he could understand it, although the past two centuries of observation must surely have given him some idea of the capitalist system. “Yes,” I said. “They trade with me and I find things or people.”

  “Find my mother,” the boy said. “If you do that, you can keep the arrowhead.”

  “I don’t want the arrowhead for myself,” I told him, “but I’m going to keep it until we find your mom.”

  Antinanco still wouldn’t look me in the eye, and his fingers fluttered just a bit at his sides—he wasn’t happy. “Why?” he asked.

  “Because I want to be sure you’ll keep coming back,” I said.

  3

  Despite my continued questioning, the following was all our young client could tell us about his mother: Her name was “Moon,” which he said would have been “Jaci” in his language. She was tall and strong, which was not terribly surprising—Antinanco was tall for his age and probably would have been a large man if he had grown—but had a warm and loving heart. She had been in this area for the summer, roughly two hundred and forty years ago.

  It wasn’t, as they say in the detective novels, much to go on.

  What was unusual (and the unusual is always helpful in an investigation) was that the boy said his mother’s hair had not been the dark color of so many native North Americans. Her hair, Antinanco insisted, was red.

  Once I had (reluctantly) agreed to look into—that was how I put it—the whereabouts of Antinanco’s mother, I insisted that Melissa go back up to her room and refused to discuss the matter again until morning. The little native boy said he had a place that he went to at night, one that made him feel safe, and promised at my insistence that he would check in every day for progress reports. I looked at Maxie, suggested she do more research on the Lenni-Lenapes (strictly because I couldn’t think of anything else to do), and then dropped myself back down through the floor to the basement. I can’t feel the heat of the boiler, but I find the glow from its pilot light soothing, and I do some of my best thinking there.