The Thrill of the Haunt Read online

  Kerin twisted her face into an expression she must have thought looked contemplative but came across sort of constipated. “It’s been a trial,” she answered. “But I think we’re through the rough spots now.” The “rough spots” presumably included Kerin’s husband and all of Harbor Haven finding out about her affair with a real estate mogul. For this, I was fairly sure, Kerin blamed me. I’d been the one who’d discovered the truth while investigating Paul’s and Maxie’s murders, but it wasn’t my fault that everyone else in town had found out. I don’t run the local newspaper.

  I just have a good friend who does.

  “I’m so glad to hear it,” I lied. “You remember Jeannie, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Kerin said flatly. She didn’t need to be nice to Jeannie, because Jeannie lived in storm-torn Lavallette (although her home was intact), not Harbor Haven, and her son, Oliver, still less than a year old, would probably never attend Harbor Haven schools. Therefore, Jeannie, in Kerin’s world, didn’t exist.

  “I feel exactly the same way,” Jeannie said, taking Kerin’s hand in hers.

  I flashed a look at Jeannie in the sort of language only very close friends can exchange without fear of retribution, and she let go of Kerin’s hand. “Well, we should be moving on,” I said pleasantly. Sort of pleasantly. I’m pretty sure I didn’t actually gnash my teeth.

  “Oh, I don’t want to hold you up,” Kerin said. “But I’m wondering. Why didn’t you help Everett with his problem?”

  Huh? “I’m sorry?” I said. That’s the polite version of huh?

  “Everett,” Kerin repeated, as if it were the identity of the homeless man that was the confusing part of the question. “He wanted you to help him with a ghost problem. Why didn’t you?”

  Jeannie’s face hardened, but she knows I don’t let her off her leash unless I think I can’t handle the situation myself.

  “You were listening to our conversation?” I asked, just to buy a little time and try to figure out Kerin’s motives.

  “Well, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” she said, affronted at the very notion. Clearly, this was my fault. “But I was right there.” She pointed to where she had stood, perhaps in an attempt to prove she’d been there.

  “Must have been hard to ignore,” Jeannie said. “What with us speaking at normal volume and everything.”

  I’d say the situation was threatening to turn ugly, but it hadn’t been that gorgeous when it had started. “I didn’t help Everett because I can’t help him,” I said. “I’m not a social worker, and I’m not a psychiatrist.”

  “No,” Kerin agreed. “You’re the ghost lady.”

  Jeannie made a sound like pfwah, which indicated that she considered Kerin’s comment something other than brilliant.

  “I’m aware that’s what people around town call me,” I said, through what I hoped were not clenched teeth. “But you should know better, Kerin.”

  “Oh no,” she said. “I know better than to know better.”

  Kerin had witnessed actual ghostly behavior at my house and had gone around telling many people in town what she’d seen. Rumors had always circulated about my house being haunted, but everybody sort of believed them in the abstract, not the concrete. Kerin’s assertions had been dismissed as the lunatic ravings of a vengeful mind. Because that was more fun.

  “You don’t really buy all that stuff, do you?” Jeannie asked.

  “It doesn’t matter what people say,” I attempted. “I couldn’t help Everett, or I would have. But his problem isn’t something I can fix.”

  Kerin narrowed her eyes. “Of course,” she said. “Well, I’ll see you around town, Alison.” She turned and walked away without acknowledging Jeannie again.

  Jeannie shook her head as she watched Kerin turn the corner and disappear. “People in this town are awfully protective of that homeless guy,” she said.

  “We are,” I agreed as we headed back to where Jeannie’s car was parked. “He’s a local institution.”

  “Your pal there is the one who belongs in an institution,” she said, gesturing toward Kerin’s last known location. “The ghost lady. Really.”

  Really.

  No. Really.

  I had to admit, the ghost-lady thing was more than just a rumor about the house being haunted. See, the ghosts are sort of an asset to my business, in a strange way. (As if they could be an asset in anything but a strange way.) Just before I opened for guests, I was contacted by a company called Senior Plus Tours, which provides vacation experiences with a little something extra to people over a certain age. Someone at the tour company had heard tales of spooky happenings at 123 Seafront—in part because word had gotten to them of the shenanigans the night Kerin was there—and offered me a deal: Senior Plus Tours would guarantee a certain number of guests per season as long as I could assure them there would be ghostly “interactions” at least twice a day.

  So I took the proposal to Paul, easily the more approachable of the two dead people in my house, and he’d agreed that he and Maxie—who took some persuading—would put on “spook shows” twice a day and cooperate at other times with the guests so I could start my business with a boost.

  But Paul wanted something in return. He’d been just getting started as an investigator when his life had been cut short, and he had loved the work. He wanted to “keep a hand in,” and in order to take on the occasional investigation, he needed a partner (or as Paul put it, an “operative”) who had the advantage of still being able to breathe. He also needed someone who could leave the house and its surrounding property since Paul was unable to do so. And he needed someone who could talk to living people and be heard.

  In other words, he needed me.

  I had agreed, probably without thinking about it hard enough, to train for and receive a private investigator license, which I kept in my wallet mainly to impress the supermarket checkout “yenta” who loves to ask about everyone’s business. I had never intended to actually put the license to use, but Paul had other ideas. So once in a while, when Paul conjures up what is usually an already dead client, I do the legwork on an investigation and let Paul do the thinking. I know that seems backward—I should be the one out of harm’s way because nothing more can happen to Paul—but circumstances force us into illogical situations.

  “People will just believe anything they hear, won’t they?” Jeannie asked, bringing me out of my reverie. Oh, yeah. Walking back to Jeannie’s car. Right.

  “Anything they think is fun,” I agreed.

  “I have to admit, you’ve done a great job of selling that ghost thing, got you a lot of business,” she said. We stopped, having reached her minivan. I’ve learned not to belabor the whole ghost subject with her. “You go get back to work,” I said. “I’ve got to get some cleaning done before I pick up Melissa, and then I have a new crew of guests on the way.”

  Jeannie chuckled. “It sounded like you said you had a new crew of ghosts on the way,” she said, getting into the van. I waved her off and turned to head back to my vintage (that is, falling-apart) Volvo.

  A new crew of ghosts? Bite your tongue, Jeannie.

  Two

  “I don’t like it,” Maxie said.

  That, in and of itself, was not unusual. Maxie was a decent bet to disapprove of anything I suggested within her earshot. She has a strong will, a contrary nature, and an ability to push my buttons that not even my daughter possesses. Sometimes I feel as if I’m raising an eleven-year-old girl and a twenty-eight-year-old ghost at the same time. I’m having better results with the eleven-year-old. Melissa has a higher level of maturity. So much so that she has it within her to be pals with Maxie. They’re thick as thieves, assuming the thieves in question are fairly thick.

  “What don’t you like?” I asked.

  We were standing—that is, I was standing, and Maxie was floating around—in what had once been my game room, where I’d kept a pool table and a padlocked cooler of wine and beer for those guests who were interested. The problem
was, not so many guests were interested in the pool table. The wine and beer were a minor hit, but the large game room was using up too much space without providing enough return for the guests. So I was renovating, although I was still working out what it would become. It was going to be the first question I’d ask the two men in my life—Josh Kaplan, my sort-of boyfriend, who owns a paint store, and my dad, who was a handyman when he was alive and who, despite his death, still does some work around my house—when I next saw them.

  Maxie moved into a vertical position and put her hand to her chin, looking almost like Paul when he strokes his goatee to indicate he’s concentrating deeply. She glanced around the room. “I’m glad it’s not so dark in here anymore, but the paneling is still ugly.”

  In an effort to lighten the room for whatever its new function would be, I had painted the 1970s-era walnut paneling white. You could still see some wood grain beneath the paint, which I thought was sort of a nice touch. But the only ghost in the room at the moment—Paul was off brooding about something; he’d been in a testy mood lately—was giving my decision the thumbs-down.

  Because Maxie had been in the process of becoming an interior designer when she was alive, and especially because she’d briefly owned this Victorian before I did, she has definite opinions about how it should be renovated. This is especially infuriating since, one, it’s my house now, which she refuses to acknowledge, and, two, she’s usually right about the design choices.

  “I didn’t want to hang more drywall in this room,” I explained. “The rest of the house has plaster walls, except for Melissa’s room in the attic, which the guests don’t get to see. It wouldn’t look right to come in here and see wallboard.”

  “But white wood grain is okay?” Maxie countered. “It depends on what you’re going to do with the room.” She pulled a tape measure from her pocket. The ghosts have the ability to conceal physical items inside their clothing, and the items won’t be tangible or visible until they take them out. It’s weird, but true. Anyway, Maxie started to measure the space between two windows with, I noted, my tape measure, on which I’d written my initials—AK—in permanent marker.

  Yeah, wall space was an issue and would dictate what I could do with the space. The former game room had a lot of large windows, but that left no space for bookshelves, so I couldn’t move the library to that room. It was too large and the wrong shape to be another guest room, which would have been more profitable but wrong for the house. I knew I didn’t want this to be a game room any longer, but the redesign was waiting for a purpose, and I didn’t have one.

  “It’s going to be a dining room,” I told Maxie, improvising. “I’m going to take cooking lessons from my mother and start serving breakfast in here.”

  She made a rude noise. “Yeah, you’re gonna cook,” she sneered. “Besides, this room is so far from the kitchen that the food would be cold by the time you got here.”

  I hate it when she makes sense.

  Luckily, Paul chose that moment to rise up through the floor (he spends his “alone time” in the basement, while Maxie favors the attic) looking gloomy. “Alison,” he intoned. “Is there any news?”

  That was a stumper. “Yeah,” I told him. “Congress still isn’t doing anything. What are you talking about, news?”

  “Cases,” he said, reprising a theme he’d been singing for weeks. “I need a new case to investigate.”

  “Easy, Holmes,” I told him. “Keep this up, and you’ll be back on the seven-percent solution by the end of the week.”

  Paul stopped me with a stare. “You don’t know what it’s like to be dead and have nothing to do,” he said.

  That was a decent point. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have any clients at the moment.” That I was actively not looking for one might have had something to do with that. Okay, I’d gone as far as running an ad for the guesthouse in the Harbor Haven Chronicle, which mentioned under the phone number in small print, “Private Investigation” without explanation. I was being passive-aggressive with myself. But it had been so unobtrusive that I’d gotten no calls.

  Paul looked defeated and sank back into the floor without another word.

  “You have to do something for him,” Maxie said, which was unusual. She doesn’t often express sympathy for Paul, seeing as how she’s pretty much in the same boat. At least she’s stopped blaming Paul for not preventing their deaths. Still, this was new. “He’s going to lose his mind if he doesn’t have some problem to solve soon.”

  I didn’t have an answer for that one either, but it was time for me to get back into the Volvo and pick Melissa up from school. After I pried her away from her friends, who tended to cluster together at the curb after school, she unburdened herself from her six-ton backpack and leaned back in the passenger seat. She sighed audibly.

  “What new intrigue is this?” I asked her.

  Liss’s attention turned to me, which had been the point. “What?” she asked.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing special. Wendy’s in love with this guy Jake.” Melissa’s BFF Wendy had a new crush every few days. Liss finds it amusing, for now.

  “Let me ask you a question,” I said. “Does the ghost thing come up a lot in school?” I get testy enough when people call me the ghost lady, but if Melissa was the ghost girl and it bothered her, we might have to think about moving.

  She rolled her eyes; mothers are so exasperating sometimes. “Only Wendy and a few other people remember anything about that,” she said. “It’s not a thing.”

  “So it doesn’t bother you?”

  My daughter looked at me like I had grown a second head in the shape of an avocado. “No,” she snorted.

  It was possible I was more concerned than necessary. We didn’t talk more on the short drive home.

  Once there, we had about fifteen minutes before the Senior Plus van drove up to the front of the house. I like to greet the guests outside when the weather permits, which it was certainly doing today, so Melissa and I were on the front walk as the group made its way from the van to the front door.

  The first to reach us were a married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Rosen, who told us they should be called Harry and Beth. They looked to be in their mid-seventies and very fit, and as always, when guests arrive (despite the paperwork I get from the tour group, which lists much of the information I need), I asked if there was anything special I could do to make their stay more enjoyable. I’m not a born innkeeper, but I’ve learned a lot in the past couple of years.

  Harry looked at Beth with some embarrassment, I thought, and she leaned over to me to speak quietly. “We came for the ghosts,” she said.

  I get that a lot. Even though the Senior Plus guests are all here because they’re curious about supernatural happenings, they often seem to feel that they’re not supposed to mention it. I’ve learned to defuse such situations quickly. I took a step back and spoke loudly enough for everyone to hear. But I did check to be sure no locals were around—the ghost-lady stuff might not bother Melissa, but it was starting to chafe on me. Luckily, no one but guests were visible. “How many people came to see the ghosts?” I asked. Melissa smiled when all the hands in the group of five went up. “Great!” I said. “I’m sure you’ll be seeing some evidence of them very soon!”

  The usual afternoon spook show took place around four, but today we had pushed it back to five because the van had been a little late, and Maxie had a new effect in which she would “walk” a pair of my shoes through the air and up the back of a guest (one I’d point out to her, who I thought wouldn’t faint or become upset). She was in the house somewhere, practicing.

  I prefer Paul and Maxie not be outside when the guests arrive, although I’ve never explicitly mentioned it. My asking Maxie not to do something is tantamount to daring her to do it. But I’d rather not have the distraction. Learning new names, getting and making first impressions, and acting the perfect hostess (okay, adequate hostess) is as much as I can handle at one time.
r />   The ice now broken, my arriving group seemed pleased to hear they’d soon be in contact with our resident spooks (before I began this grand adventure, I would have been terrified at the prospect, but hey, to each his own). I can accommodate as many as twelve guests at a time, now that Melissa has moved upstairs to a refinished attic room and her old bedroom is a guest room. But this week there would be only six—five from Senior Plus and one who’d booked separately at the last minute via my website and wasn’t arriving until six o’clock. In addition to Harry and Beth Rosen, this group also had Cybill Hobsen, a single, and Libby and Tom Hill, a couple. Even adding in the still-missing sixth guest, only four rooms were in use. Previously, more fully booked tours had required some singles to pair up and room together. Since the storm, the number of guests per Senior Plus tour had declined. The shore was still rebuilding, and I had begun to wonder whether the number of people desiring to stay in a haunted house was beginning to exhaust itself. Perhaps, in the parlance of the marketing world, I was reaching market saturation. I’d have to start advertising more. I couldn’t count on Senior Plus to fill the place anymore.

  I welcomed the guests inside and told them to acquaint themselves with the place. Maxie descended through the ceiling while I was checking in with Libby Hill, whose husband, Tom, was still helping Mack, the van driver, bring in their bags. The Hills did not travel light.

  I tried my best to ignore Maxie, who seemed to be in a serious mode, something she’s never really able to pull off successfully. Her black T-shirt—a wardrobe staple—was plain, no clever or offensive logos, and she was wearing black jeans and glasses I knew she couldn’t possibly need.

  “Ghosts,” Libby said, shaking her head. “I don’t know how Tom talked me into this one.”

  “Are you afraid of ghosts?” I asked sympathetically. Even on ghost tours, you get some who are nervous.

  Libby looked like she was going to laugh. “I would be if they were real,” she said. I stole a glance at Maxie, but instead of scoffing, as I’d expected, she took a notepad out of her back pocket and a pencil from behind her ear and started to write something down. Luckily, she was behind our guest, who didn’t see the flying objects.