Old Haunts

by E. J. Copperman

  Lucy Simone, the youngest of the current group, was out with friends from the area. She wasn’t one of the Senior Plus guests—she was a native New Jerseyan who’d switched coasts after college. It was not a beach vacation for her, since the ocean wasn’t exactly a novelty for someone from California. The Swine was taking up the last available room.

  The five of them in the den all looked up when I walked in. I must have had a look of despair on my face, because they all appeared concerned when they saw me.

  “Are you all right, dear?” Mrs. Fischer asked.

  “Just fine,” I said, even though I felt like I was being pressured into something I really didn’t want to do. “Just trying to hold onto my convictions.”

  “Convictions?” Francie, a sixtyish woman with flaming-red hair reminiscent of Lucille Ball or Bozo the Clown, asked. “Are you an ex-con?”

  “No, Francie,” Don, who was even wearing an actual ascot in the mid-nineties weather, admonished. “Convictions, like in your principles.”

  I winced, anticipating a follow-up comment from Francie about the state of public schools’ administration, but luckily, she remained silent. From behind me, however, I heard Maxie’s voice, and it didn’t sound happy.

  “You won’t do this for me?” she asked.

  Immediately, I did a mental inventory of the guests. Everyone in the room had come via Senior Plus Tours, which meant they had come looking for ghosts. I could in fact be seen speaking to someone who wasn’t visible and still stand a chance of not being considered a raving lunatic. So I turned and saw Luther in the doorway to the kitchen, looking pained. Above his head was Maxie, hovering over the kitchen door, wearing a black T-shirt with “Good to the Last Drop” emblazoned on her bust.

  I couldn’t talk to Maxie in front of Luther, but I could talk to Luther. “I won’t do this for you,” I said, looking just a little above his head. He must have thought I had some strange astigmatism.

  And, of course, that was when I heard The Swine’s voice from the entrance to the foyer, behind me. “Which one of us are you talking to, Alison?” he asked.

  “You’d do it for anybody else, but not me?” Maxie demanded, as if there was no one else in the room. Maxie didn’t much care about anyone else being in the room. She could see them, she could hear them, she could even sort of touch them, but for the most part, she ignored the guests except during the two-a-day spook shows she knew were necessary to my Senior Plus contract. “I help you out every single day with this little guesthouse of yours, and you can’t do this one thing for me?”

  “It’s one of the ghosts,” Francie piped up to Steven. “She’s talking to one of the ghosts.” Thanks a heap, Francie.

  “Ghosts?” The Swine put on a look of absolute bafflement. Melissa, at his side with the inevitable ugly stuffed animal I’m sure Steven had “won” for her at the boardwalk (it looked kind of like a neon-orange goat), looked helplessly at me.

  “Ghosts?” Luther echoed. Francie’s head turned between Steven and Luther like she was watching a tennis match.

  “Sure,” Francie went on. “There are ghosts haunting this place. It’s why I came here.”

  Luther did what people do when they hear there might be ghosts in the room. He looked up and scanned the ceiling. I understand it, but they’re almost never there.

  Melissa, meanwhile, was intent on getting her father out of the room, and if she could, I resolved to increase her allowance. “Come on, Daddy,” she tried. “I want to see how the tiger looks in my room.” Oh, so it was a tiger?

  But Steven wasn’t buying. “Ghosts, Alison?” he asked.

  I was about to suggest we go into the kitchen to talk when Luther walked over to me and looked seriously down at my face. “You sure I can’t change your mind?” he asked.

  Steven’s eyes widened a bit. He was getting the wrong idea. Good.

  “Find someone better for you,” I answered. “I’m not the right one.”

  “I think you are,” Luther said. “And I don’t plan on giving up.”

  The Swine’s mouth dropped open.

  Luther, his point made, nodded at me, turned, and left, walking right past Steven and Melissa as he did. My daughter watched him go with a strange look on her face, then looked me in the eye and asked, “Who was that?”

  “I’ll talk to you later,” I told her. “Steven, can I see you in the kitchen for a moment?”

  Before The Swine could respond, however, Paul rose up through the floorboards to stand directly in front of me. “We need to talk,” he said. That wasn’t ever a good thing. Both his look and his tone communicated some urgency, and that was even worse. Paul wasn’t going to be dissuaded.

  “Certainly,” my ex-husband said, and started to head for the kitchen.

  “Not now,” I told him. “I meant later, at dinner tonight.”

  A conspiratorial twinkle appeared in my ex-husband’s eyes. “You’re inviting me to dinner?” he asked.

  “Strictly business,” I told him.

  Melissa had heard Paul, and knew her father shouldn’t find out about our two less-than-alive tenants, so she jumped in, a sneaky trait she did not get from my DNA. “Come on, Daddy,” she reiterated. “I want you to see how the tiger looks in my room.” She took Steven by the hand and led him, looking bewildered, toward the stairs.

  A little late, but a small increase in allowance would be a possibility.

  “Now,” Paul said, as if I hadn’t gotten the message the first time.

  I looked at the assembled guests, whose level of intrigue ranged from rapt attention with an expression of salacious anticipation (Francie) to complete and utter disinterest (Albert). The two sisters, in their eighties and self-assured, were watching, but discreetly, as they quietly began discussing their taffy-shopping plans. Mrs. Fischer and Mrs. Spassky had class. Don Petrone merely looked dapper and said nothing.

  “I’ll be in the attic if anyone needs me,” I said to the room.

  “Where will you be if we don’t need you?” Albert asked. The man was a laff riot.

  I chuckled. “That’s very funny, Albert.” Yeah, I’m a businesswoman.

  Paul rose through the room and vanished into the ceiling. This was his subtle signal that I should get my butt up to the attic pronto. Seeing little choice, I did exactly that.

  Once I made it all the way upstairs, thinking all the way that moving my daughter up this many flights might not be a great idea after all, I found both Paul and Maxie waiting to ambush me in my own attic. So I decided, having anticipated this gambit, to do a little work on the construction site at the same time. I think better when I’m doing something with my hands.

  “Let’s cut to the chase,” I said. “I know what you’re going to say, and you know what I’m going to say.”

  “I doubt it,” Paul said.

  Maxie was hovering near the window, where the light coming in made her harder to see, and she sounded uncharacteristically soft and airy, to go with her appearance. “Is there something I can get you, Alison?” she asked.

  I had to squint to make sure it was really Maxie over there; she almost never called me by name.

  I turned from the wall I was sizing up and looked at her. “Yeah, a house with no ghosts in it,” I suggested.

  Maxie didn’t even pick up on the comment, which had sounded more harsh than I’d meant it. “I mean, like a bottle of water, or some sandpaper, or something?”

  “Okay, what exactly is the scam you’re trying to pull, Maxie?”

  Her voice took on a slight edge, but it was obvious she was trying to control it. “I’m just trying to be accommodating,” she said.

  So that was it—Maxie wanted to show off how cooperative she could be in the hope that it would inspire me to be the same. Good luck with that maneuver, but if I could get something out of it… “Sure, Maxie. A bottle of water sounds good. It’s hot up here.”

  “Be right back,” Maxie answered, and before I got the chance to revel in her obsequiousness, she w
as gone.

  “Okay, what’s your act?” I asked Paul, who still looked rather stern. He was apparently trying the opposite of Maxie’s tactic. That wouldn’t work, either, but it was considerably less enjoyable.

  “I don’t have an act. I just…” He stopped when Maxie reappeared through the floor. She pulled two bottles of spring water out of the pockets of her cargo pants (the ghosts can change wardrobe whenever they like, so Maxie had made sure to “put on” something in which she could conceal objects easily).

  “Here ya go,” she said in a voice so sprightly it sounded like she was in a commercial for floor wax. “Nice cold water. I even put on an extra show for a couple of the guests when I took them out of the fridge and flew them through the den.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I looked back at Paul, expecting him to launch into his pitch for me to investigate Big Bob’s murder, but he stood (floated) there, not saying anything and looking irritated. It was odd.

  “So?” I said to him. Maxie turned and looked, too. But Paul remained silent, making strange circles with his mouth that suggested he was trying to think of the right thing to say.

  Finally, he turned to Maxie and said, “Can you give us a moment alone, please?”

  I was a little surprised at that, but Maxie didn’t miss a beat. She stole a glance at me, seemed to decide this would ingratiate her with me, and nodded. “No problem. You know where to find me.” And she disappeared into the ceiling. Maxie sits out on the roof sometimes, and on other occasions, it’s absolutely anybody’s guess where she goes.

  I put my hand on my hip and scowled at Paul. “I thought she’d never leave,” I said with a sarcastic edge.

  “You weren’t getting it,” he protested. “I just wanted to have a word with you, and you kept avoiding me.”

  “You know, if you want to ask me a favor, there are better ways to get on my good side than making a scene in front of the guests.” I started spreading joint compound on the seam between two pieces of wallboard.

  “The first time I offered you a ring.” Sly English Canadian wit. With my ex-husband downstairs and an unpredictable Maxie trying to get me to investigate a murder, that was the last thing I needed.

  “We’re not talking about me investigating what happened to Big Bob?” I asked.

  “Of course not, although you really should do that for Maxie. No, I want to get back to what we were talking about before.” Paul grunted and floated over to where I stood, the better to look me in the eye. “I was trying to ask before if you would help me find someone.”

  Once the seam is filled with compound, there’s a trick you can use: Get a damp (not wet!) sponge and lightly run it over the edges of compound, smoothing as you go. This will save you tons of sanding later. “Find someone?” I asked Paul. “Can’t you just send out a Ghostogram or whatever it is you do?”

  “This is someone who’s still alive,” Paul said quietly.

  I turned to look at him. His face, always serious, was bordering on sad. “Who are we talking about?” I asked.

  “The woman I was going to marry,” Paul answered.

  I actually stopped smoothing the joint compound and turned to look at Paul, but he had moved so close to me that I was immediately startled. “You were engaged?” I asked.

  “Well, I was going to ask her,” he said. “Just before I took the job guarding Maxie, I bought the ring I showed you, and once the assignment was over, I was going to ask. I was carrying it around in my pocket for days. And, well, you know what happened.” Paul and Maxie had been murdered his second day on the job as her bodyguard, something Maxie rarely let Paul forget. This raised the stakes on his pain a good deal, I thought.

  “Why didn’t you ever say anything before?” I asked. “I told you I’d get in touch with anyone you wanted, to let them know you were…the way you are. You didn’t even want me to contact your brother in Canada.”

  Paul’s gaze was so intense it was hard to look at him long. But going back to spreading joint compound seemed sort of rude now, like I’d be insinuating his problem was trivial. He closed his eyes a moment, which helped in an odd way.

  “At first, I thought it was best to try to forget her,” Paul said. He turned his face away from me. “I figured I was gone and she needed to move on with her life, and I should do my best to stay out of it. That seemed like the thing to do.”

  “So what changed your mind?”

  “It’s just short of two years since all this happened,” he answered. “And things have changed, surely. I’m accustomed to my current state of being; I’ve accepted that there is no returning. But there’s something that feels…unfinished about the way I left Julia. Like I hurt her unnecessarily.”

  I didn’t understand that. “It’s not your fault you died,” I told Paul.

  “I know.” There was something in his voice. It sounded like Maxie had before, when she’d found out that Big Bob had died.

  My ex-husband was downstairs. Maxie’s had been found buried under the sand in Seaside Heights. Paul wanted to locate his ex-girlfriend. It was “Revisit Your Failed Relationship Week” at 123 Seafront Avenue. No doubt Mrs. Fischer and Mrs. Spassky would soon be visited by boyfriends they’d dumped in 1956.

  “When you’re alive, the idea that you need closure in a relationship seems normal,” Paul went on. “People understand that they need to make peace with what has happened and continue their lives. But what happened to Maxie and me…It takes a while to absorb exactly how permanent it all is. And now, I just want to know that she’s all right. I want to see if she’s moved on.”

  “Will you be able to handle it if she has?” I asked.

  “I’d like to think so,” he said. “It might be harder on me if she hasn’t.”

  The seam between the two pieces of wallboard was going to be smooth. I might have to do a touch of sanding when everything was dry, but not much. And that was good, because I hate sanding.

  “Okay, I’ll try to find your…Julia for you,” I told Paul.

  He lowered his head. “Thank you.”

  “It’s what friends do for each other,” I said.

  Paul turned back to face me. His eyes didn’t look any different than they usually did, and his semitransparent appearance didn’t allow for tons of color to come through, so I didn’t know if they were red. But he looked like he’d been through an emotional ringer. He coughed theatrically, and looked me in the eye.

  “If you do it for me, you’re going to have to do it for Maxie, too,” he said.

  “I know.”

  Six

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I work in Harbor Haven.” Detective Lieutenant Anita McElone (rhymes with macaroni) sat behind her immaculate desk in the squad room of the Harbor Haven Police Department, which is to say the entire department minus the chief’s office. Even on a Sunday morning, she was all business. “This is a murder that took place in Seaside Heights. Why would I know anything about it?”

  “Because you’re a detective, and you have a natural curiosity about something that happened so close to home,” I told her. “You’d know about it because you get the dispatches from the county prosecutor’s major-crimes division, probably in an e-mail on your desktop right now. And I’m figuring you’d know about it because, well, you’re the only cop I know. How am I doing so far?”

  McElone and I have an unusual relationship. I respect her professionally, and she thinks I’m a lunatic. So far, it’s been a workable enough arrangement, but it has had some hairy moments. We don’t talk about those much. In fact, we don’t talk about anything much if we can help it. But my private-investigator’s license had gotten me in the door, and I figured if I was going to look into Big Bob’s death, talking to an actual cop might not be a bad place to start.

  “You have a client on this, or is that little B and B of yours not keeping you busy enough?” McElone likes to prod me, because she knows my guesthouse is not a bed and breakfast. I don’t serve breakfast, though I do provide coffee and d
irections to a local diner that gives my guests a discount. It’s win-win, really. No one wants to eat my cooking. Even the broccoli I bought yesterday and then totally ignored was well on its way to becoming compost.

  I was ready with a true answer, for once. “I have a client. Luther Mason, a friend of the deceased, wants me to find out what happened to Big Bob.” I’d called Luther and told him I’d changed my mind about the investigation, and he had agreed to (hell, he’d practically rejoiced over) paying me my “usual fee.” As if I had a usual fee. My first official client had been a ghost.

  McElone raised an eyebrow. “Big Bob?”

  “The victim, Robert Benicio. He and Luther used to ride together.”

  The eyebrow came down, and the eyelids dropped to half mast. “They used to ride together,” she repeated slowly.

  “On their hogs,” I said.

  I think the detective actually chuckled a bit. “So, out of the entire world of private detectives, an old biker pal of the victim decided to come to the owner of an adorable Victorian on the beach to find out who murdered his pal?”

  Well, that wasn’t very nice. “Yeah,” I said defiantly, or at least petulantly, pushing aside my own doubts. “You got a problem with that?”

  McElone ignored the question. “So how come ol’ Luther decided you’re the PI for him?”

  “How come you’re the one asking all the questions?”

  “Hey, I get paid whether I talk to you or not. I’ve got a B and E right here on my desk I could be looking into right now.” McElone was such a ham that she actually leaned back and laced her fingers behind her head. “So are you going to explain yourself, or am I going to try to find out who busted into an expensive house during tourist season and stole only a DVD player? Not even Blu-Ray?”

  I groaned, more inwardly than audibly, I like to think. “What was the question?”

  “What made Big Bob’s biker buddy decide to pick your name out of the Yellow Pages?”

  “He said he overheard a conversation between me and Phyllis Coates about my investigator’s license, and thought I’d be the right person for the job,” I told her. “He said it was kismet.”