Ghost in the Wind Read online

  Maxie looked annoyed. “Why is somebody always ruining it when I get the attention for a second?” she whined.

  “Calm down, you won,” I told her. “We’ll show Ghost, but over my protest.”

  Maxie brightened up. “Of course you will. I won the vote!” It takes so little to make her happy—just me not getting whatever I want.

  “Maybe I should go see, too,” Josh said, squinting in the direction Liss indicated Dad and Paul had gone. He likes to feel useful, but he sometimes overlooks certain facts.

  “You wouldn’t see anything,” Melissa pointed out.

  Josh grinned a little sheepishly, which is one of his better grins. “Touché, Melissa,” he said. He stayed put.

  From the entrance to the movie room came a somewhat tired voice. “Is there something going on in here?” Maureen Beckman, one of my younger Senior Plus guests this week, moved her walker into the room as I went over to meet her. Maureen didn’t move around all that well (“My hip. As soon as I finish this vacation I’m going into the hospital to get a new one.”), so I was trying to minimize the amount she had to walk in the house. She was game, though, and had already spent a full day on the beach, something younger, sprier guests don’t always find enjoyable in September.

  “Nothing special, Maureen,” I said as I reached her, only a few feet into the movie room. “Something I can do for you?” This is how you learn to talk in Innkeeper School. I assume.

  “Well, Alison, you know I don’t like to complain.” Of course, Maureen loved nothing better than to complain; but she did it in an ingratiating way, and since I’m from New Jersey, a little complaining doesn’t bother me. “But it gets a little chilly in my room at night.”

  I had put Maureen in the largest room I had, which was located on the ground floor and wouldn’t require her to climb stairs, and had not charged her the extra fee I usually ask for that room. It does get a hair cooler at night, though, especially at this time of year. “I can put another blanket or two in there for you,” I told her. “Do you need a space heater?”

  Maureen waved a hand. “Oh no,” she said. “I’m sure extra blankets will do it. Thank you, Alison.” As she turned to leave, I saw Paul and Dad hover back into the room. There was another ghost behind them, not being dragged but certainly lagging behind. I could barely see him.

  Maureen turned back. “There’s just one more thing.” With Maureen there was always just one more thing. “Do you know of a reliable taxi service in the area?”

  Of course, I knew of several, and was about to give her the name of one that would accommodate her needs (and perhaps get me a small percentage in accordance with an agreement I have with a few local businesses that I know are reputable).

  But suddenly I found myself unable to speak.

  “Um . . . um . . . um . . .”

  Melissa, immediately keen to such things, looked up at me with a perplexed expression on her face. “Mom?”

  I wanted to tell her it was okay, because it was okay, but the words weren’t coming. “Ahhhh . . .” I said instead. At least it was a variation.

  Josh came to my side. “What’s going on?” he whispered in my ear. “Is it a ghost thing?”

  “I’ll just check the phone book,” Maureen said, shaking her head a bit and heading out of the room, walker clacking as she moved. There went my commission.

  My mother looked at me, then followed my line of sight and chuckled a little. “Oh, that’s it,” she said.

  “What?” Josh wanted to know. “What’s it?”

  Maxie, her face even more sardonic than usual (mouth curled to one side, one eye narrowed), lowered down to look me directly in the eye. “What got in your drawers?” she asked. Maxie is the very picture of restraint and demeanor.

  I was staring at the new ghost and my mouth was moving. That much I knew. But nothing coherent was happening.

  Have you ever met an idol of yours, face-to-face? I mean someone you absolutely adored from the time you first saw them, someone whose every work you collected religiously, someone who seemed to absolutely understand your nature and communicate directly with you although you’d never actually met?

  I was currently staring upward at mine: Vance McTiernan, lead singer and songwriter of the Jingles, maybe the least appropriately named band to come out of England in the 1960s. I first became aware of them more than twenty years after the band split up, but once I’d been introduced to the Jingles, and Vance especially, I was devoted for life. There was a time I would have gladly sued for my independence from my own parents if Vance McTiernan had expressed an interest in adopting me.

  “Mom?” Now Melissa was starting to sound worried. “What’s wrong?”

  I have evidence of my strength of mind, because I forced myself to relearn the entire English language in one second. But what I was thinking came out as one word, as a thirteen-year-old girl (something Melissa will be in two years, and if you don’t think I’m dreading that, you are incredibly wrong) would say it: “OhMyGodThat’sVanceMcTiernan!”

  Vance himself looked surprised. “You know me?” he asked, just as Josh was saying, “Where?” and Maxie was saying, “Who?” Josh’s expression indicated he remembered the name but couldn’t place it, and Maxie’s indicated she was Maxie.

  “Yes,” I answered to the only one I was listening to. “I’m a big fan. It’s an honor, Mr. McTiernan.”

  He was a great physical specimen (before the heart disease had weakened him) for someone who had died at least one president ago: he looked lean and somewhat better defined than he had been late in his life. This must have been a slightly younger version than the final Vance, but certainly not the one I’d seen in magazines and concert footage from before I was born. He’d abused drugs and alcohol in an attempt to prove he was a real rock star (according to the biography I’d read) because his deep, intelligent lyrics had moved some critics to argue that he actually wasn’t crude enough for the Jingles music to be considered rock ’n’ roll. The fact that they’d jokingly called themselves the Jingles hadn’t helped his case.

  Now he smiled the most charming smile since Cary Grant gave up smiling, and floated down toward me. “But you’re much too young,” the charming accent said, making the words that much more endearing. “You couldn’t have even been born when I was working.”

  My mind was still operating on something lower than its usual level, so although I grinned foolishly back at him, I couldn’t get it together enough to respond. Mom picked up the slack. “She got the records from me, Mr. McTiernan,” she said.

  He diverted every ounce of his attention to her, reached for her hand with both of his and said, “You call me Vance. All of you.” His arm swept the room, including us all, living and . . . otherwise.

  “Swell,” Maxie mumbled. Maxie truly hates it when attention is on anyone but her.

  Josh touched my arm gently and asked, “Where should I be looking?” Josh is a very understanding man who is fascinated with all the ghostly goings-on at my house but knows it’s best to ask about them after the fact, when I can explain everything at once rather than fielding questions as events unfold.

  I pointed, and Vance (what the hell, we were on a first-name basis now) looked down at him.

  “Nice to meet you, sport,” he said to Josh.

  “He can’t actually see or hear you,” I explained to Vance when Josh didn’t react.

  Vance blinked and looked around the room. “Oh. I thought it was the house that was special.” He focused those laser eyes in my direction, and something odd happened inside my stomach. “Turns out it was you, love.”

  It was my definite and deliberate plan to bask in that moment for about two weeks, but I was wrested out of my reverie by, of all people, my daughter.

  “No, Mr. McTiernan. My grandma and I can see you, too,” Melissa said.

  I did not feel resentment toward Melissa
for refocusing Vance’s attention away from me. I didn’t. Not even a little.

  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

  Vance swooped over and looked Liss in the eye. “Of course you can, my dear,” he cooed at her. “You are all very special ladies indeed.”

  Paul, with a concerned look on his face I didn’t understand, coughed theatrically (which is the only way he can cough. I don’t think it’s possible for him to catch a cold anymore, which he would no doubt say was one of the few advantages to being dead).

  “Mr. McTiernan—” He checked the singer’s look in his direction and began again. “Vance says he came here following a message I sent out some time back.” I knew that Paul sometimes sent out mental advertisements about what he truly sees as our detective agency, since he can communicate sort of telepathically with other spirits, a system we call the Ghosternet. (Okay, I call it the Ghosternet. Paul just isn’t as hilarious as I am.)

  “I understand you offer investigative services,” Vance said. “I am in need of such a professional, alas.”

  This was the first time I’d ever been glad to be a PI. “What can we do for you, Vance?” I asked. For once, here was a client I’d happily take on.

  “Mr. . . . Vance said he wants us to investigate a murder,” Paul said and, very uncharacteristically, shook his head no just slightly.

  “Of course we will,” I said, looking at Vance. “Let’s have a seat.”

  Two

  Those of us who weren’t floating led the way to the area where I’d collected some sofas, armchairs and other furniture gotten from garage sales and thrift shops to serve as unusually comfortable theater seats. Mom, Melissa, Josh and I sat down while Paul, Maxie and Dad (who seemed distracted by the ceiling fan, at one point taking an adjustable wrench out of his back pocket and tightening something) floated within earshot. Vance brought up the rear, seemingly taking in the atmosphere.

  Josh did a quick double take at seeing a wrench repairing the fan on its own, then nodded and turned back toward the front of the room, despite his not being able to see or hear what was going on. Josh seemed less than amazed at Vance’s presence. He was leaning a little heavily on me and staring up, pretending to look in the direction of the ghost, but his gaze lacked focus. Then I realized he’d been up since five this morning and probably wasn’t as much of a Jingles fan as I was, because nobody is.

  Vance McTiernan took center stage, directly over the flat screen.

  “I’m a brokenhearted man, that’s for sure,” he began. A true showman, he knew how to get a crowd’s attention. “It’s a murder, pure and simple, and I’m powerless to do anything about it.”

  I did some quick math in my head. “Surely not you,” I said to Vance. “You’ve been . . . that is, it’s been eight years since . . .”

  Maxie rolled her eyes at my insensitivity. Most ghosts balk at words like dead. They’re such babies.

  “It’s true, I’ve been gone quite a while, and it was my own excesses did me in,” Vance admitted. “No, I’m here begging for some closure, some clarity in the death of my only child, my little girl, Vanessa.”

  I knew the name. Vance had been involved in some intrigue in the seventies when a woman brought a paternity suit against him and it was determined the child, a daughter named Vanessa, was indeed Vance’s.

  Maxie vanished into the ceiling. I figured she was heading up to Melissa’s room in the attic, the one Maxie sort of shares with my daughter, to get her laptop. Maxie is in charge of online research for our investigations and she’s a whiz at it.

  “As Vance was explaining, apparently his daughter passed away about four months ago,” Paul said, seeming anxious to get to the gist of the matter. His abruptness was somehow unsettling because it was so unlike him. “He believes she was a victim of foul play.”

  “There’s no ‘he believes’ about it,” Vance said, a tiny suggestion of anger in his voice. “It was definitely murder, and I want the bastard found and punished.”

  I looked at Paul, who was hovering above Vance, as if being higher would make him right. “I think the question is open to debate. Before you ask, Alison, no, I have not been able to contact Vanessa. Either she is deliberately not responding or she is one of those souls who didn’t land on this spot in the continuum.”

  Paul tells me that there’s no rule book for the afterlife, and often notes that while some people die and become ghosts, others seem to move directly to whatever the next thing might be. Paul and Maxie have seen other ghosts evolve past this point, but there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the process.

  Paul is convinced there are other stages of existence past the one he and Maxie have found themselves occupying. We have seen other ghosts vanish into what appears to be some sort of metamorphosis, although we don’t know what type of dimension that might be. And Paul is envious of those who, as he puts it, “don’t have to spend eternity in one place.” Toward that end (moving on to whatever the next thing is), he had been experimenting with the energy that seems to make up his and Maxie’s bodies. He thinks it’s the key, but so far all he can do is run appliances that aren’t plugged in, which came in handy for a little while when the power went out during a thunderstorm during the summer. The ice cream in my freezer never melted, but Paul needed to rest in the basement for six hours afterward.

  “Maybe she just doesn’t recognize your voice and doesn’t think she should answer,” Mom said to Paul.

  He cocked an eyebrow. “It’s possible, but what harm could come from responding? She can’t get any more dead now.” He caught himself and looked at Vance. “My apologies.”

  “No worries, mate,” Vance said in a fake Australian accent. He was a performer, all right.

  “How did your daughter pass away?” Mom asked Vance, trying to defuse the situation.

  “They said she had an allergic reaction,” he spat out, as if the words tasted bad. “They said she had eaten Chinese food with soy sauce, but she was terribly allergic to soy and she knew it. She was careful.” His voice trailed off and his lower lip flattened out. Ghosts can’t cry, at least not real tears, but the impulse is still there, Paul tells me. Vance burst out, “So it can’t be true. Somebody poisoned her, as sure as I’m standing here!”

  He wasn’t actually standing there, but the point was made. Before anyone could react, Maxie dropped down through the ceiling wearing a bulky trench coat. When the ghosts hide objects in their clothing, said objects have the ability to pass through walls and ceilings. Cuts down on the guests asking about books walking up the stairs and such. Of course, most of my guests come specifically to see the ghosts but this way Maxie’s route was more direct.

  As soon as she got through the ceiling and into the room, the trench coat disappeared and Maxie returned to her usual uniform of tight jeans and a black T-shirt with white lettering. This one read, “Unexpected.” She was holding her laptop computer and clacking away at the keys.

  “Poisoned?” I said. “Are you sure? How do you know?” Clearly Vance had some inside information. Maybe he’d been there watching helplessly as it happened.

  “I know,” he said. Well, that was helpful.

  “Where did this take place, Vance?” Paul asked. Paul is all about gathering information and putting the puzzle together. Sometimes he also notices that people have feelings. He’s a very nice guy with a good heart—okay, he used to have a good heart—but he gets so caught up in the hunt that he occasionally overlooks the emotions that surround it.

  “Here, in Harbor Haven,” Vance said, with a tone of how-could-you-not-know-that in his voice. “Nessa had just moved here before . . . it happened. That’s why I came here. It’s why I responded when I got your message, mate. Because you were here.”

  That must have nicked Paul a little bit. He likes to think we have a reputation as the go-to sleuths of the ghost world. He did not show the wound, though. He plowed on throu
gh.

  “So we can check with the Harbor Haven police and they’ll have records,” he said, not necessarily to Vance. “But if the medical examiner found that there was no foul play . . .”

  “Oh, there was foul play,” Vance intoned, his accent taking on a slightly threatening tinge. “And I know who played it foul, too.”

  Maxie looked up from the computer screen. “You know who killed your daughter?” she asked.

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t need you.” Vance floated back and forth, like pacing but without moving his feet at all. “Whoever did it would be dealing with me at this very moment, no doubt.”

  Maxie, having clacked away a while longer, shouted, “Aha!” before Paul could respond to Vance’s pronouncement. “I’ve got it here.” She pointed at the screen. “Vanessa McTiernan, daughter of the front man for the Jingles—”

  “Front man?” Vance interrupted. “I was the Jingles. The other three played what I told ’em to play.”

  “But Phil Leeds was a genius on the bass and Louie Calhern never missed a beat, even when your rhythms got complicated. Morrie Chrichton’s name is even listed on a bunch of the songs as a cowriter.” I hadn’t intended to challenge Vance, but the music geek in me emerged when I wasn’t looking.

  Vance’s lips took on a sneer and his eyes cooled down considerably. “Morrie Chrichton.” He said the name with what could only be described as contempt. “Phil and Louie were basically session guys, but Morrie! That untalented old tin-pot couldn’t have written his own name if I hadn’t shown him how. He got credit on the songs because we made a stupid deal when we were twelve years old and I was too much a gentleman to dissolve it when we started making money. Don’t talk to me about Morrie Chrichton.”

  I decided not to talk to Vance about Morrie Chrichton, possibly ever again.

  “Anyway,” Maxie went on, “it says here that police responded to an anonymous 911 call about loud music in the apartment. Vanessa McTiernan was found dead in her home four-and-a-half months ago, in April. Initial reports indicate natural causes, probably a severe allergic reaction.”