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  But back to the problem of what was going on with Mom.

  “Okay, I’ll let you live your fantasy,” Jeannie answered me. “Your mother isn’t seeing some guy. So what’s your explanation for what you heard?”

  I couldn’t tell her that I was pretty sure Mom had been talking to a ghost. I mean, I could have told her that, but she wouldn’t have believed me, so it wasn’t going to get us anywhere.

  She took my momentary silence for capitulation. “Aha!” she shouted. “You agree with me that she has a boyfriend!”

  “No. I really don’t. I was just thinking that it doesn’t make sense for some guy to just walk into her house and wait in her bedroom.”

  “Why not?” Jeannie demanded.

  “Because Mom wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t trust someone enough to give him a key yet never even mention his name to me. She wouldn’t set up some weekly . . . rendezvous in her bedroom just for . . . that. Mom hasn’t even talked about meeting anyone. It’s too soon since Dad died.”

  “It’s been five years,” Jeannie chimed in helpfully.

  I pulled into the driveway at my guesthouse and drove all the way back behind the house to the carport. There was a little overhang there that would shield the car from most of the snow, if I got lucky and the wind was blowing the right way. A girl could dream. “It’s been a slice, Jeannie,” I told her, “but I have to go batten down my hatches. Is Tony home yet?”

  “No, but he’ll be here soon. It’s the baby’s first snowstorm, and we want to make sure he enjoys it with his whole family.” At four months, Oliver would be lucky to stay awake until a full inch was on the ground, and certainly wouldn’t know the difference, but you can’t tell new parents anything.

  I hung up my phone and got out of my car, wondering if Murray Feldner, the guy I’d hired to plow snow from my sidewalk and driveway areas, would remember our contract. I’d have to call and remind him. I raised the windshield wipers straight up in the air so they wouldn’t stick to the windshield (although I’ve always harbored a secret plan to leave the car running with the wipers on all through a blizzard), and was halfway to my back door when the realization hit me.

  There had been something familiar about the way Mom spoke to the person in her bedroom. It had conjured up an emotional memory. There was only one person my mother had ever spoken to with such a scolding tone, because she was secure in the knowledge he’d still love her no matter what she said.

  The ghost Mom had been shooing out of her house because I was there had been my father.

  * * *

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  Berkley Prime Crime titles by E. J. Copperman

  Haunted Guesthouse Mysteries

  NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEED

  AN UNINVITED GHOST

  OLD HAUNTS

  CHANCE OF A GHOST

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  A WILD GHOST CHASE