Chance of a Ghost

by E. J. Copperman

  I smiled at Penny with a look that said, “New mother; whatcha gonna do?” “It sounds like Mr. Laurentz wasn’t an especially popular figure while he was working here,” I said. “Was it just his attitude, or were there some people who didn’t like him more than others?”

  Penny looked like she’d bitten into a chocolate doughnut and found it tasted like fish. “I don’t like to speak ill of the dead,” she said.

  “It’s okay. He can’t hear you.” I knew that for a fact, since Lawrence was nowhere nearby. There was another ghost in the room, however, one who must have been from the 1930s based on his overcoat and hat. He looked to be in his fifties and was floating along horizontally, looking as close to asleep as the dearly departed can get.

  “Well, all I can say is that when the news that Larry died got back to the department, there were some people who really weren’t all that sad.” Penny blinked a couple of times and drew a breath through clenched teeth.

  “Like who?” Jeannie asked as she put a new diaper on Oliver.

  “Oh, I don’t want to name names,” Penny said.

  Jeannie gathered Oliver from the countertop, rolled up the changing pad and then grabbed the used diaper, which she had closed up tightly. She leaned toward Penny, although not too close because the woman still had a sniffle.

  “Should I just drop this in the wastebasket?” she asked.

  Penny gave us three names before we left, and in thanks, Jeannie put the diaper into a biodegradable plastic bag and disposed of it in the restroom.

  Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad having her along on the investigation, after all.

  Eleven

  “Why haven’t you interviewed the three theater employees yet?” Paul asked me later that day.

  Nan and Morgan Henderson, having clearly decided to hang in with me at the guesthouse, were back from their day of…I admit it, I didn’t ask. Now I was making tea in the kitchen for them. I’d put on the oven, too, because the kitchen is drafty, and I figured I’d justify it by baking something. So at the moment, I was cutting up squares of premade chocolate chip cookie dough. Paul, hovering over the center island (incidentally with his head inside the exhaust fan), saw this as a sign that I was not completely engaged in our investigation.

  “I have guests to take care of,” I said very quietly—no sense in attracting the attention of said guests and once again convincing them that I was off any number of rockers. “Jeannie had to go home, and I had to come here. This is my business first, and we have an agreement about that, Paul. This place is how I keep a roof over my daughter’s head. Any snooping has to happen when my responsibilities here are covered.”

  I turned on the CD player in the kitchen to cover any further conversation and slipped in a Beatles CD. Rubber Soul. You can’t beat the classics.

  Paul stuck out his bottom lip, but he knew he had no argument. “We agreed to that, I know,” he said. “But I’m concerned that you don’t care enough about this investigation.” I felt it was probably best not to mention how I’d sobbed myself to sleep the night before thinking about Dad, but that would certainly have indicated that I did indeed have an emotional stake in what was going on.

  “Here’s the thing,” I said, figuring I could tap into Paul’s detective mind instead. “Whether we find that Laurentz/Brookman guy died of a heart problem or if he was a victim of a vicious Pop-Tarts killer, my priority is finding my father. What else should I be doing?”

  Paul loved nothing better than to be consulted on a difficult puzzle. If Sherlock Holmes were a dead Canadian with fairly impressive musculature and an incongruous goatee, he’d be Paul. He put his hand to his chin in the characteristic pose of contemplation. Men love to be observed being natural.

  “I have attempted again to contact your father and didn’t succeed,” he told me. “We need to know more about what his ghostly routine was like before this strange interruption. Have you asked your mother?”

  I idly picked up a piece of cookie dough and ate it. This was because I didn’t want to look Paul in the eye, and also because cookie dough is delicious.

  “I’ve never really talked to her about Dad since he died,” I said as John Lennon sang about crawling off to sleep in a bathtub. “She didn’t deal well with the way he was when he died, so weak and defeated. It wasn’t the way either of us wanted to remember him.”

  “And since you’ve been able to see people like me?” Paul asked.

  “We’ve never spoken about it,” I told him. I set a kitchen timer for ten minutes, in accordance with the instructions on the dough wrapper (which still had some delicious dough stuck to it, too), then picked up the cookie sheet and put it in the oven. “I used to think it was just because it was too painful for Mom.”

  “And now?”

  I steeled myself and faced him. “Now I think it was because she was embarrassed that Dad was continuing to have a relationship with her, but he didn’t ever get in touch with me or Melissa.”

  Paul nodded slightly. “You knew your father well,” he said. “Why do you think he would choose to stay away from you and his granddaughter?”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t make any sense. Maybe there’s something about being…Paul, do you feel any different than you did when you were alive?”

  He narrowed his eyes in thought. “I’m a little less aware of physicality, of course,” he said. “I don’t worry about weather or temperature. I don’t get hungry. I’m not afraid of being hurt when I have the chance to think about it. I don’t really have a sense of presence. I don’t need to sit or lie down most of the time. I’m not really…here.”

  “You’ve told me most of that before. I mean emotionally. Do you not care about things now that were really important to you before this happened to you?” I think I held my breath a little waiting for his answer.

  “You’re asking me if I think your father stopped caring about you and Melissa when he died,” Paul said. He made a point of staring into my eyes. “No.”

  “Then it’s a mystery. What can I do?”

  There were still eight minutes left before the cookies would be done, but the aroma of baking cookies had already permeated the room, and I was mentally dividing them up among my guests and my daughter. It’s also possible that I had one or two staked out for myself. Or three.

  Paul scowled again. “You need to get past your disinclination to speak to your mother and find out how your father was spending his time previous to this incident. You need to determine if there’s a place he would go—away from most living people, I would guess—if he were really determined to disappear effectively for reasons we can’t yet understand.”

  That all made sense, but there was something he wasn’t saying. “And once I find all that out, what do I do?” I asked.

  This time Paul looked away to avoid my reaction. “You take Maxie there,” he said.

  “Maxine?” Mom asked. “Why Maxine?”

  We had assembled, once again in my kitchen, for a war council that could be held out of the earshot of Lawrence Laurentz. I’d stashed the cookies—the ones I hadn’t eaten or given to Melissa when she got home—away for after dinner, which Mom would prepare. Mom reported that the theatrical ghost wasn’t always in her house, but she couldn’t be sure when he was there and listening because he’d gotten good at moving through the walls to be out of Mom’s sight when he didn’t want to be detected.

  Maxie, tickled with the idea that things would be left to her, was grinning as she hovered in the area of the stove. Paul, pretending to sit on the center island so he could be the focus of the conversation (a tactic so far turning out to be less than stellar), was doing his investigator-face thing. Melissa, home from school and not to be denied a place at the table this time, actually sat at the table.

  “Because Paul can’t leave this property, and we can’t trust Lawrence as far as we can throw him, which isn’t far since we can’t actually touch him,” I explained. “It appears Dad doesn’t want to see me, so he might leave if I
’m visible. So Maxie’s our best bet.”

  That wasn’t easy to say. The fact was, I wasn’t crazy about the prospect of placing all my hopes for finding Dad on Maxie, either. She wasn’t the most responsible being who ever existed, and her concept of problem solving generally had an element of improvisation to it, with the end result usually being that Maxie had no plan B. She often didn’t even have a plan A.

  “Well, I don’t understand how we’re going to find him to begin with,” Mom said, avoiding the Maxie issue.

  I sat down next to Melissa and put my fingers to my temples. This was an indication of thought. “First, we have to figure out what state of mind Dad might be in, why he’d want to isolate himself,” I said. “I know Dad pretty well, at least when he was alive, and I can’t figure it out. Do you have any ideas?”

  Mom isn’t still when she thinks. She cooks when she thinks. Luckily, she’d brought the makings for oven-fried chicken and mashed potatoes, so she started to bread chicken legs and was silent for a few moments. Then she stopped, her fingers full of Panko bread crumbs, and turned to look at me. “Your father is not a man given to worrying about himself,” she said. “He wouldn’t hide out of fear. He wouldn’t abandon us if he didn’t have to.”

  “He pretty much abandoned me and Liss.” It really just slipped out. I was as surprised to hear myself say that as Melissa, whose eyes widened.

  “I asked him,” Mom answered, her face turned away from us but her voice a trifle unsteady. “He always said that it wasn’t that he didn’t want to see you; it was that he couldn’t.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” I told her.

  “I know,” Mom answered. “Believe me, there have been some…tense words between us, but he won’t, or can’t explain. There’s something he’s not telling me, too. He just won’t discuss it, but it’s hurting him. A lot.”

  “It doesn’t make sense to you, Alison,” Paul interjected. “You don’t know what your father’s situation might have been. That’s what we’re here to find out. Loretta, how does your husband normally spend his time? Before this happened, what was his routine?”

  “When he was alive, he worked during the day,” Mom said. “At night, we’d usually watch television or play cards. It’s funny, you don’t think those are the things you’d miss.”

  “But you could still do those things with Grampa,” Melissa said. “You said he came by every Tuesday. You could still watch TV or play cards.”

  Mom took the cookie sheet on which she’d placed the chicken legs and some breast pieces and slid it into the oven. She was careful to concentrate on her cooking and not anyone else present, which wasn’t easy considering the arrangement of beings in the room.

  “We did that sometimes,” she told her granddaughter. “Once in a while.”

  “Why just Tuesdays?” Paul went ahead. “What did Mr. Kerby do the rest of the time after his death?”

  “I don’t know,” Mom answered. Her voice sounded clipped and uncomfortable. “He didn’t tell me.”

  She turned toward the kitchen counter, but I stood and walked to her. I stopped her in her tracks and took hold of her forearms gently.

  “We’re trying to help him, Mom,” I reminded her in a quiet voice. “You can’t hold back now.”

  “I’m not holding back,” Mom said. She extracted her arms from my grasp. “I just don’t know why Dad didn’t tell me much or why he only showed up once a week. He changed when he crossed over. I don’t really understand it. He seems like the same man in many ways, but he’s sadder and somehow more secretive than he used to be. It worries me, Alison.”

  I looked up at Paul. I knew his natural inclination now that Mom had opened up would be to push the issue, but she was hurting and I didn’t want to press on anymore. I knew how much it had pained her to say even that much about Dad that wasn’t glowing and upbeat.

  “What are our options, Paul?” I asked. “What kind of…spatial dimensions are there to search? Where do we look?” If I could focus the conversation on the nuts and bolts of finding Dad, I might be able to spare Mom some discomfort.

  Paul read the urgency in my voice, sighed and shrugged. “Our best bet now is to do two things. First, I can start sending out messages to other spirits and see if your father has been seen anywhere other than this immediate area.” He started to stroke his goatee again.

  “What’s the other thing?” I asked.

  “Take Lawrence Laurentz at his word and hope that solving his death will lead us toward your father.”

  “That means another look at the medical examiner’s report and some questions on the investigation. I don’t know any cops in the town where Lawrence died, so I have to talk to McElone again,” I said with a moan.

  But my daughter stood up and put on the most determined face I’d ever seen her wear, which was saying something. This was a girl who had held her ground for six straight days when told that she couldn’t attend a midnight showing of a Harry Potter movie, and had worn me down.

  “No,” she said. “You find Mr. Laurentz’s co-workers. I’ll talk to the lieutenant.”

  Eleven

  “Why haven’t you interviewed the three theater employees yet?” Paul asked me later that day.

  Nan and Morgan Henderson, having clearly decided to hang in with me at the guesthouse, were back from their day of…I admit it, I didn’t ask. Now I was making tea in the kitchen for them. I’d put on the oven, too, because the kitchen is drafty, and I figured I’d justify it by baking something. So at the moment, I was cutting up squares of premade chocolate chip cookie dough. Paul, hovering over the center island (incidentally with his head inside the exhaust fan), saw this as a sign that I was not completely engaged in our investigation.

  “I have guests to take care of,” I said very quietly—no sense in attracting the attention of said guests and once again convincing them that I was off any number of rockers. “Jeannie had to go home, and I had to come here. This is my business first, and we have an agreement about that, Paul. This place is how I keep a roof over my daughter’s head. Any snooping has to happen when my responsibilities here are covered.”

  I turned on the CD player in the kitchen to cover any further conversation and slipped in a Beatles CD. Rubber Soul. You can’t beat the classics.

  Paul stuck out his bottom lip, but he knew he had no argument. “We agreed to that, I know,” he said. “But I’m concerned that you don’t care enough about this investigation.” I felt it was probably best not to mention how I’d sobbed myself to sleep the night before thinking about Dad, but that would certainly have indicated that I did indeed have an emotional stake in what was going on.

  “Here’s the thing,” I said, figuring I could tap into Paul’s detective mind instead. “Whether we find that Laurentz/Brookman guy died of a heart problem or if he was a victim of a vicious Pop-Tarts killer, my priority is finding my father. What else should I be doing?”

  Paul loved nothing better than to be consulted on a difficult puzzle. If Sherlock Holmes were a dead Canadian with fairly impressive musculature and an incongruous goatee, he’d be Paul. He put his hand to his chin in the characteristic pose of contemplation. Men love to be observed being natural.

  “I have attempted again to contact your father and didn’t succeed,” he told me. “We need to know more about what his ghostly routine was like before this strange interruption. Have you asked your mother?”

  I idly picked up a piece of cookie dough and ate it. This was because I didn’t want to look Paul in the eye, and also because cookie dough is delicious.

  “I’ve never really talked to her about Dad since he died,” I said as John Lennon sang about crawling off to sleep in a bathtub. “She didn’t deal well with the way he was when he died, so weak and defeated. It wasn’t the way either of us wanted to remember him.”

  “And since you’ve been able to see people like me?” Paul asked.

  “We’ve never spoken about it,” I told him. I set a kitchen timer for
ten minutes, in accordance with the instructions on the dough wrapper (which still had some delicious dough stuck to it, too), then picked up the cookie sheet and put it in the oven. “I used to think it was just because it was too painful for Mom.”

  “And now?”

  I steeled myself and faced him. “Now I think it was because she was embarrassed that Dad was continuing to have a relationship with her, but he didn’t ever get in touch with me or Melissa.”

  Paul nodded slightly. “You knew your father well,” he said. “Why do you think he would choose to stay away from you and his granddaughter?”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t make any sense. Maybe there’s something about being…Paul, do you feel any different than you did when you were alive?”

  He narrowed his eyes in thought. “I’m a little less aware of physicality, of course,” he said. “I don’t worry about weather or temperature. I don’t get hungry. I’m not afraid of being hurt when I have the chance to think about it. I don’t really have a sense of presence. I don’t need to sit or lie down most of the time. I’m not really…here.”

  “You’ve told me most of that before. I mean emotionally. Do you not care about things now that were really important to you before this happened to you?” I think I held my breath a little waiting for his answer.

  “You’re asking me if I think your father stopped caring about you and Melissa when he died,” Paul said. He made a point of staring into my eyes. “No.”