Ghost in the Wind

by E. J. Copperman

  “Not very big. Light hair. Big brown eyes. Not too bright.” This was essentially a reiteration of her last description.

  I also picked up the Asbury Park Press. Got to have the local news and Phyllis only puts out the Chronicle once a week. “How did you two get separated?” I asked the ghost.

  She had clearly not been very lucky when she was alive; her clothes were a tick or two short of ragged and her hair was straggly and unwashed. She had not regenerated, as Everett had done, into a younger, happier, stronger version of herself when she’d died.

  “He just wandered off,” she said. “Lester does that.”

  Finally, I picked up the New York Post. Not all my guests are that classy. “It would help if I knew Lester’s last name,” I told the woman.

  “He doesn’t have one,” she said with a why-don’t-you-know-that tone, and vanished, wagon and all.

  Well, that was helpful. Now I had to deal with a prickly Paul and a quest for Lester with no road map for either. That didn’t even include Vanessa and Vance McTiernan and what I was supposedly doing for them, with even less help than usual.

  Given all that, it still would have been so much better if Paul had not shown up for the Saturday afternoon spook show.

  All of the guests were present for this one except Roberta and Stan Levine, who’d told me that they were taking a day trip to Atlantic City (while there still is an Atlantic City) and expected to be home quite late. With Melissa here to do her “flying girl” extravaganza, it should have been a rousing performance, giving the assemblage their money’s worth for choosing to stay in an establishment that proudly displayed said “Haunted Guesthouse” sign to the left of its front door.

  But Paul, although gamely going through the motions (even though only Liss, Mom and I could see them) was barely entertaining enough to get a kid to hand over a quarter. And the more the guests asked if “that musical ghost” was going to come and play for them again (a question for which I had no answer), the more Paul seemed disinterested and tired. He didn’t even try to pull the tablecloth out from under the extremely cheap (and hopefully unbreakable) knickknacks I had especially displayed on the den’s side table, something that always presented a welcome challenge to Paul. He had never successfully accomplished the feat but had always seemed determined to improve to the point where he would do it.

  Until now.

  Maxie, rustling the curtains and “flying” an apple around the room, looked at her partner and demanded, “Are you going to pull your weight, or what?”

  Paul, brows low, turned toward her and put down the orange he’d been . . . holding. “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “You’re making me work too hard,” Maxie said, shaking the light fixture in the center of the room (I hesitate to call it a chandelier for fear of making it sound too grand). “Get in the game.”

  “I’m doing what I always do,” he answered. Except he had forgotten to “fly” Melissa down the stairs and she was no doubt waiting on the second floor as we spoke for her cue.

  I was trying not to get involved in the argument because the guests were present and needed to feel that the “entertainment” going on was wholehearted and enthusiastic, for their benefit. Mom was off in the kitchen doing something, as she prefers not to attend the spook shows. She always worries that something’s going to get broken.

  “Are there any questions for the spirits?” I asked. If the guests feel like they’re in contact with Paul and Maxie, they can tell their friends at home about the direct interaction they had with ghosts. You can laugh if you want to, but I’ve gotten guests on referral this way.

  “Yes,” Berthe Englund piped up, raising her hand like a second-grader. “Can they communicate with my late husband?”

  This is not an unusual question. Paul can do his Ghosternet thing and try to find some dead people but since the system is so random—some people (like Vanessa) don’t show up as ghosts, others don’t communicate the way Paul does and there is a percentage that legitimately don’t want to talk to the living anymore—we don’t advertise that fact. Not to mention it would tie up all of Paul’s time and he considers the Ghosternet stuff personal.

  “It doesn’t really work that way,” I told Berthe. “Otherwise, I would have checked in on Abraham Lincoln by now.” That’s my prepared answer for such questions and it got the chuckle it often does. Truth be told, I had once asked Paul to see if he could link minds with the Great Emancipator but Paul apparently didn’t have Abe’s area code because there was no answer. The president was probably trying to find a revival of Our American Cousin so he could see how the play ended.

  “Oh,” Berthe looked disappointed. Some people sign up for a trip to the guesthouse just for such purposes, although I’ve asked Senior Plus Tours to be clear that I’m not a medium, so much as I mainly just communicate with the two ghosts already not-living in the house.

  “I’m sorry about that, Berthe. Any other questions?” Got to keep the show moving. Maxie picked up a pair of scissors from the table and pretended to cut Tessa’s hair without actually doing so. But she was glaring at Paul, who simply watched the whole time. Tessa didn’t seem to notice, but the other guests had a chuckle when it was clear no hair was being removed.

  “Yeah.” Jesse Renfield stood up, apparently believing he wouldn’t be heard if he were sitting. “Is it scary being dead? I mean, should we be afraid of it?” It was a reasonable question, and would have been a better indicator of Jesse’s deep thinking if he hadn’t been wearing a Speedo and a T-shirt that read, “Jersey Girls Don’t Pump Gas.” I mean, we don’t—gas stations in New Jersey are all full-service by law—but why would a man wear that shirt?

  “Answer number twelve,” Maxie said after waiting for Paul to reply and seeing him stare, glassy-eyed, toward the kitchen door.

  “Maxie says it’s not something she’s glad happened, but it’s not the terrifying existential void some believe it to be.” That was close to the standard answer Paul traditionally gave, which was, “We’re not happy about it but we like being here for you.” I embellish a little.

  “Is there a heaven?” Maureen Beckman asked as Maxie threw an orange at Paul, who reflexively caught it.

  I pretended to wait for an answer. “Paul says he doesn’t know,” I told Maureen. “Since he died, he’s only been here.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Paul informed me, as if I wasn’t aware. “And I do hope to move on someday.” I knew that, and hadn’t intended the comment as a dig at his inability to leave the premises, which Paul’s touchy about.

  “How about a hell?”

  Maxie and I turned to see Vance McTiernan, acoustic guitar in hand, hovering in the kitchen doorway.

  Paul didn’t have to turn. Vance was right where Paul had been staring all along. He’d been waiting for Vance.

  Seeing me turn, Tessa followed my eyes and saw the guitar suspended in midair. “Oh, the musician is back!” she said, and actually clapped her hands.

  Berthe and Maureen joined her. Jesse, who had not been at the first performance Vance had delivered, held back his adulation. He was a show-me kind of guy. Or he had no idea why they were clapping. Either way.

  “Vance,” I said under my breath. “Thank goodness.”

  Paul’s eyes darkened. He didn’t evaporate, but he folded his arms defensively and faded—literally—back into the wall. Only his face remained in the den.

  I stepped forward. “Ladies and gentlemen,” I announced, “Vance McTiernan!” There was not a flicker of recognition in the crowd, but they did offer light applause.

  Vance began to play, quietly at first and then with more conviction. I immediately recognized the tune, from the Jingles first album. It was Sunflower, a simple, heartbreaking remembrance of first love. Again, Vance was aware that most of his audience couldn’t hear his vocal, so he concentrated on the acoustic guitar. But for Maxie, P
aul and me (well, maybe not for Paul), he sang:

  Sunflower

  You gave a lonely boy

  a taste of power

  Then you took it away . . .

  It was an adolescent’s point of view but when I’d first heard it, I was an adolescent, so it continued to resonate and evoke nostalgia in me. While he was singing, I forgave Vance for manipulating me, for confusing me, for making me question my friendship with Paul. Music is not a benign tool—it can save your sensibility or talk you into some terrible mistakes. I didn’t know which it was doing now.

  Vance finished the song and got the rousing round of applause—even from Jesse—that he’d known he would. He even bowed, probably out of habit.

  Then he turned toward me. “That was my way of apologizing,” he said. I didn’t have to ask what he thought he’d done to warrant an apology.

  “Accepted,” I said, quietly so the guests couldn’t hear. It wasn’t that they needed to be left out of the conversation so much as the time it would take to explain it.

  Paul rolled his eyes at the scene. His mind is tuned to logic and fact. He makes his decisions based on things he can prove. Music is a pleasant distraction to Paul, but actually letting it dictate one’s actions is absolutely unimaginable to him. I understood, and did not take him to task for his obvious distaste at what I’d thought was a tender moment.

  Maxie put her fingers in her teeth and whistled. Maxie is the very embodiment (if she had a body) of class.

  The guests, assuming Vance’s performance was the finale for the afternoon show, started to gather what few things they had brought and stood to leave. Paul was at least not so delusional to think he could top what had just gone on but he did look somewhat offended by their total indifference to him as he waved a napkin in the air. Nobody looked.

  He gave a glance toward the side table, considering the tablecloth trick, then probably remembered the times it hadn’t worked (all of them) and sighed a bit. He sunk through the floor to go lick his wounds, I assumed.

  Vance stashed his guitar behind the sofa and watched Paul leave without comment. Maxie, who usually clocked out like an hourly employee after the spook show, floated down and “sat” on an armchair, watching Vance with a kind of interest I couldn’t read from her face.

  “You always played music?” she asked. I had to squint to make sure it was Maxie, since I’d never heard her evince interest in anyone who wasn’t her or, lately, Everett. But mostly her.

  “Saved me,” Vance said. “Me mates and I, well, we heard the records coming over from America and we wanted to be those guys. Otherwise, I probably would have ended up a hooligan, you know, kicking people’s heads in after a bucket of beer for absolutely no reason at all. I wasn’t any good at school, but I could play me some guitar.” I got the feeling this was a rehearsed response, something he’d used in the countless interviews he’d done during his life. Parts of it—the phrase “bucket of beer” especially—I thought I remembered from an article in Rolling Stone.

  Now, this was the sort of exclusive interview Phyllis would die for, except that she’d actually have to be dead to get it. So I gave up the idea.

  “I wish I’d been good at something,” Maxie said.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked as Maxie frowned. “You were an up-and-coming interior designer before you got poisoned.” All right, so I should have stopped before the part about the poison. I admit it. I had gotten Maxie annoyed now, and that was not a good idea.

  “Do you think you could teach me guitar?” she asked Vance, completely ignoring what I’d said.

  “I would be tickled to try,” he said.

  Maxie giggled. No, really. “You can’t play guitar while you’re being tickled,” she crooned.

  His face brightened; he’d seen this before. I had, too, but never from Maxie—she was flirting. I didn’t think such a thing was possible. It was disgusting.

  “So how’s Everett?” I asked her. “Are you seeing your boyfriend tonight?”

  Luckily, my mother exercised her gift for perfect timing at that exact moment and emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “I’ve been making cookies,” she announced out of the blue. “Anyone want one?”

  Maxie and Vance, who after all don’t eat, shook their heads out of politeness. “I think I’ll be off to do some exploring,” Vance said. He looked at Maxie. “Do you know the area?”

  “I’d love to show you around,” Maxie said to Vance. She didn’t extend her arm for him to loop his own through but he did so anyway and they phased through the den’s outer wall toward Seafront Avenue.

  For some reason, this annoyed me. Maxie and Everett hadn’t been together long (and they were dead, of course), but her cavalier attitude toward that relationship was worrisome at best. Yeah, I’d asked her to keep an eye on Vance, but this looked like more than an eye. Everett had been a really good influence on Maxie these past weeks, with his military discipline and sensible attitude. Was she really going to jeopardize that for this flaky British musician? (That’s how concerned I was, to think of Vance McTiernan as a flaky British musician.)

  “I’ll get Liss,” I told Mom, mostly because I couldn’t think of anything to do other than ask Paul to Ghost-mail Everett and warn him about what was going on behind his back. That probably wouldn’t have helped and Paul might not have agreed, given the mood he was in.

  “What’s with them?” Mom asked. “I thought she was with Everett.”

  “Apparently Maxie is easily distracted,” I said. I think a drop of acid may have fallen off that last word and burned a hole in one of my floorboards.

  Mom considered my face carefully. “I’ll get Melissa,” she said. “You go in the kitchen and have a cookie. There’s cold milk in the fridge.” There are times we both forget whose house this is. Mom walked off toward the stairs toward Liss’s attic room. She’d probably just get to the first landing and text; Mom’s knees aren’t what they used to be but she seemed to want to give me a moment alone.

  I took it: I went into the kitchen because, hey, there were freshly baked cookies. I was sitting there idly munching on one of them when Paul raised himself up through the floor, at least up to his belt.

  “I think I just got a message from Vanessa McTiernan,” he said.

  Ten

  “What does that mean?” Melissa asked. “You think you got a message from Vanessa? How come you don’t know?”

  She chewed on one of Mom’s chocolate chip coconut cookies, which she had whipped up with no prior preparation, having simply brought the ingredients for them by chance. That was Mom’s story and she was sticking to it.

  Melissa had a glass of milk in front of her. I had finished my cookie before she and Mom had come down from upstairs and was considering taking another because neither of them had seen me eat the first one. Paul had, but he doesn’t care about such things and wouldn’t rat me out. For the record, Mom and Melissa wouldn’t care, either, but in my guilty mind they would judge me and that was keeping me from taking the second cookie.

  For now.

  “It’s not an exact experience,” Paul explained. He was gracious enough not to affect a weary tone despite having explained his ghost telepathy to us more than once before. “I receive impulses, feelings. It doesn’t take the form of words all the time. This one was a very strong sense of regret and she seemed to be trying to tell me she was Vance McTiernan’s daughter.”

  “So she has come back as a ghost,” Mom said. Mom was eschewing the cookies entirely but she didn’t fool me; she’d probably eaten some of the dough while she was baking them and maybe had a “test” cookie when they came out, too. There is an advantage to having grown up in her house. “I was sure you wouldn’t hear from her.”

  “I’m not completely sure I did,” Paul reminded her. “People don’t generally materialize in this state after four months. Th
is is highly unusual.”

  “What did she say?” I asked. I took a step away from the cookies, which were on a white plate ringed with yellow on my center island. I was being a responsible adult. It was new to me, but I believed I liked it.

  Paul refrained from once again mentioning that these messages weren’t literal. “She was concerned about her father,” he said. “She seemed to think he was engaged in a campaign of revenge and she didn’t want that.”

  This sounded suspiciously like Paul conjuring up a fictional conversation with Vanessa to convince me I should quit her case. The idea that Vance was unstable and irrational was awfully convenient, especially given that this revelation had come to him right after the spook show when Vance had stomped all over Paul’s turf.

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “Did she want you to do anything?”

  “She wasn’t that direct. But she said something about finding her band, that they could be the key to her death.”

  Curiouser and curiouser, Alice would say. “Doesn’t she know what happened?” Mom asked.

  “She wasn’t clear about that.”

  This seemed fishy. “She’s saying exactly what Vance said to me before,” I said. “Doesn’t that seem like too big a coincidence? Who in the band does she want me to talk to?” (I was going to see the band that night anyway, but Vance, significantly, didn’t know that.)

  “She didn’t say.” Paul stroked his goatee. I’d been waiting for that; it was a sign he was thinking about the case as a case.

  “Interesting,” I said. If I let Paul stew in his own juices, he might come back to being an investigator without my prodding. I wanted him back on the case but I didn’t want to have to swallow my pride any further to get him there. Does that make sense? I’d have to gently nudge him here—very gently. “What do you think it means?”

  Paul’s head snapped up like he’d been challenged to a duel. “Means?” he asked. “It means she wants you to talk to her band. Why? Have you told Vance something you shouldn’t?”