An Uninvited Ghost

by E. J. Copperman

  Paul nodded. “That’s right, you’re not. Because if this woman was killed, if Scott really did do her some inadvertent harm, he’s not asking us to find out who was responsible. He’s not asking us to solve the crime. He just wants to know if it was his fault, so he can look himself in the mirror.”

  “He’s blind.” I looked at Paul. “And anyway, can you guys see yourselves in the mirror?”

  “That’s not the point. He wants to be able to live . . . exist inside his own mind. Is that too much to ask? You do a little legwork, ask a few questions, find out if the crime occurred. Whether or not it did, that’s as far as our investigation goes. There is no danger. The man already can’t see. Do you also want him to be alone in a dark place with guilty thoughts?”

  “He said he would be paid back with a promotion to the next level of existence,” I reminded Paul. “How does that work? How do you know there is a next level?”

  Paul leaned his head to the right. “There’s no way to know,” he said. “Some people believe if we perform the right kind of acts in this state, we are moved on to something better, something higher. Some people think this is all there is. Scott obviously believes that he needs to redeem himself to reach the next stage.”

  “What do you believe?” I asked him.

  “Until seventeen months ago, I didn’t even believe in ghosts,” Paul sighed. “I’m not the guy to ask. But some people get so frustrated being . . . like me, that they end their existence entirely.”

  “That’s possible? You’re already dead.”

  Paul nodded. “I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard about it from other people like me,” he said. “Apparently, the frustration can get so unbearable for some of us that they actually will themselves into a nonexistence. I’m told they just sort of dissolve into nothing.”

  “Ghost suicide,” I said, shaking my head. “Go figure.”

  “That’s what Scott is up against,” Paul said, pushing it a little too hard for my taste.

  I stood up. The guests hadn’t seen me for a while now, and that was bad business. I started for the door into the den. “You’re not playing fair,” I told Paul. “You’re trying to make me feel guilty.”

  “It’s not a pleasant feeling, is it?” he countered.

  At the door, I stopped and faced him, but he had traveled to the entrance, and was now only inches from my face. “Suppose we find out that Scott did kill that woman with a sword,” I said. “Would our telling him that make him feel better?”

  Paul frowned. “Now who’s not playing fair?” he asked.

  I walked through the swinging door and into the den, mostly because I didn’t have an answer for that. The house, for a place with ten living people and two ghosts inside, was remarkably quiet. I was emphasizing peace and quiet in the advertising, and privately acknowledging the ghosts only to Rance’s group, which seemed fascinated by the subject. We kept television out of the common areas, which annoyed Melissa, but she had relented when I’d gotten a flat-screen HDTV and mounted it on the wall of her bedroom.

  Single moms aren’t always the bad guys.

  Tomorrow night, as had been agreed to in my contract with Senior Plus Tours, we would hold a “séance,” during which I would relay Paul and Maxie’s responses to questions posed by curious guests gathered for the evening. But tonight had no special event scheduled, so I toured the house to see that all the guests were getting what they wanted out of their stay.

  It was early in the season, and Senior Plus had blocked out a few rooms for the next four weeks, but Rance had been explicit in his instructions that this first group was a “trial tour,” and that negative reviews could jeopardize future bookings. He would personally read every evaluation form filled out by the guests at the end of their stays with me.

  In short, I had to make sure everyone had a rollicking good time. Linda Jane so far had seemed quite pleased with the level of service I offered her charges (and I’d seen her at a distance talking with Dolores Santiago, who’d arrived only a half hour later than she’d predicted), though I was fairly certain she’d most likely hear from Bernice Antwerp, the perpetually grumpy woman from the group. Most of the other guests were lovely (although Mr. and Mrs. Jones rarely—if ever—left their bedroom), but Bernice could find fault in world peace if she put her mind to it.

  Tonight, I found her in the library, walking from shelf to shelf (we had over two thousand books stacked), shaking her head. “Anything I can help you with, Mrs. Antwerp?” I asked, careful not to call her by her first name, a breach of propriety that had earned me a scolding her first day here. “Having trouble choosing a book?”

  “There aren’t any good books here,” she griped, shaking her head and snarling a bit. “I can’t imagine who chose all these books; they’re awful.” I hadn’t actually chosen the books myself; I’d bought most of them in bulk from collections and estate sales, but still, she couldn’t find one thing to read among two thousand books?

  I was determined, though, to break through. “Well, if you let me know what kind of books you enjoy reading, I can certainly see to it that they’re stocked here,” I said.

  “Good books,” Bernice reiterated. Of course; why hadn’t I thought of that?

  “I’ll do what I can,” I assured her. She made a hmmph sound as I left the library.

  Newly determined by my encounter with the unpleasable Bernice, I checked out the game room, which in reality had only a pool table in it. Two older gentlemen, Warren Balachik and Jim Bridges, were drinking beer and playing pool. They looked up when I appeared in the doorway.

  “Alison!” Jim grinned. He was a friendly, gregarious man who had seemed tickled by everything that had gone on since he’d arrived. “Checking up on us?”

  “I just wanted to see who was winning,” I told him. “Thought I might take on the winner myself.”

  “Do you play?” Warren, a smaller, slighter man with a permanent bend in his neck (which was actually something of an advantage at pool) asked.

  “No. So it’s easy to beat me,” I answered.

  They laughed, and Jim said, “I think I’ll beat Warren, and then just beat him again.”

  “Your choice,” I reminded him. Good to see the guys were enjoying themselves.

  I’d barely made it out of the game room when I found myself face-to-neck with Dolores Santiago, the last-minute addition. Dolores, who appeared to be in her sixties, had inch-thick glasses and wore her long gray hair tied in a mammoth ponytail in the back. She stood about six feet tall and had not once so much as cracked a smile in my presence, but she had been very, very interested in everything ghost-related that went on in the house. Dolores was definite in wanting to observe what she called an “ongoing paranormal incident” going on in my guesthouse. She’d signed on to the tour only two days before the group arrived, and her payment had been directly deposited into my business account only the day before.

  “Mrs. Kerby,” she said, although I have never used Mrs. in my name and Kerby is the name I was born with, “I’m wondering if you might direct me toward the paranormal presences in your home. I would like the opportunity to commune with them outside of the group. Other people only complicate my impressions.”

  I had thought of getting a Dolores-to-English dictionary, since she seemed to talk like this all the time, but instead, knowing how hard it was to convince Maxie to do even the few appearances she made during each day, I told Dolores once again about the séance planned for the following night, during which she’d be free to ask the two “paranormal presences” anything she’d like.

  “It’s not verbal communication I’m discussing,” she said. “I have a few devices in my room that can measure the vibratory presences in your home, and their efficiency is hindered by other living beings.”

  Devices that could measure vibratory presences, hmm? I bet. But best not to comment on that, especially since Paul chose that moment to materialize right behind Dolores. Even though Dolores was quite tall, I was baffled by how sh
ort Paul appeared until I realized that he was about calf-deep in floor, and therefore a bit less imposing than normal.

  “What is she talking about?” he asked, but I ignored the question. If Dolores saw me talking to him now, Paul—or more significantly, I—would get not a moment of peace until Dolores was safely on the way back to wherever it was she had come from.

  “I don’t really have that much control over the ghosts,” I told her instead. “They come and go as they please. Feel free to talk to them if you believe you feel a presence nearby, however.”

  “There’s nothing you can arrange?” she said. Uh-oh. The customer is always right, Alison.

  “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll see what I can do,” I told her.

  Dolores actually curled her lips in a somewhat upward direction. It wasn’t exactly a smile, but it turned her perpetual frown into something resembling a straight horizontal line. “Thank you,” she said. “I will look forward to it.” I considered asking what it was exactly she was looking forward to, but decided not to press my luck. I walked down the hallway, saw Dolores head into the game room of all places, and maneuvered into a corner where I could quietly talk to Paul.

  “It’s a lot harder to talk now that we have guests,” I more or less hissed at him. “You can’t just pop up and expect to have a conversation.”

  “I don’t see why not, since the fact that Maxie and I are here is the reason you’ve been able to rent the rooms out.” So he wanted to play hardball, eh?

  “If you’re trying to persuade me of something, your salesmanship skills are coming up way short,” I told Paul.

  Paul retreated. “You’re right; that was a cheap shot.” He really is a softie behind all the transparent muscles and the private-detective attitude. Canadians don’t like it when it’s implied they’re being rude. “It’s very frustrating wanting to do something, and being unable to because you’re . . . like me.”

  So now he was playing the dead card. “I’m not heartless,” I told him. “I’m cautious. I don’t see this Scott thing turning out well for anybody. And I have no idea, even with my extensive investigator training, how to find out if somebody died when I don’t even know who that somebody might be.”

  “Your extensive investigator training consisted of me telling you how to pass the exam,” Paul reminded me, oblivious to the sarcastic edge in my voice, I guess. “And I think if someone died from a sword injury in an abandoned hotel, that might narrow the field of possible victims somewhat.”

  “Fine. I’ll ask around a little tomorrow. But I have to be around for the séance tomorrow night, and so do you. And I’m still wondering exactly how we’re going to break it to your new best friend if we find out that he did in fact kill a little old lady.”

  Paul bit his lips. “We’ll have to decide that if it happens,” he said.

  I started back toward the main room, and Paul followed along. “I’m just telling you ahead of time, I’m not happy about this one.” I told him.

  “Noted. But I think you’ll find that you enjoy helping people out this way. You’re easing a man’s mind for all eternity; isn’t that worth something?”

  There was a lot less peace and quiet in the main room than when I’d left. I picked up the pace when I realized that a group had gathered in the middle of the room, and the front door was standing wide open. Instinctively, I looked around for Melissa, but didn’t see her. I started walking even faster.

  I calmed down a little when I noticed Maxie hovering near the ceiling, grinning from ear to ear. Whatever her faults (and I could chronicle them, given the time), Maxie is devoted to Melissa, and would never be smiling if she saw my daughter in any kind of difficulty.

  I got to the entry area, Paul just behind me, and tried to sort through the crowd. Melissa was indeed there, looking just fine, but confused. My mother stood near her, but was facing the group gathered in the center of the room. The two guys from the game room and Linda Jane were standing in the center of the room, forming a circle around . . . Who were those people?

  “It wasn’t a real hot tub,” said a man I couldn’t see for all the people in the way. “It was a much larger tub we had built there, so more of the cast could be seen at once.”

  “Oh my!” Warren breathed. “It all looked so real!”

  “It’s real, all right,” the man’s voice answered. “Everything that happens on camera really happens. We just make sure it looks as good as it can when it happens.”

  “Excuse me,” I almost shouted. “I’m the proprietor here. Can I help you?”

  “Oh, Alison!” Jim said. “It’s amazing! I’m so glad you didn’t tell us it was going to happen—the surprise is wonderful!”

  “What surprise?” Apparently, I was surprising the guests with something so secret, even I didn’t know about it.

  The crowd parted, and standing in its center was a man of about thirty, with a haircut that had probably cost as much as the sofa in my main room. He wore blue jeans carefully aged to look as if they hadn’t been carefully aged, a polo shirt with a logo so trendy I didn’t recognize it, and shoes designed to look extremely casual at about three hundred dollars a pair.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Are you Ms. Kerby?”

  Melissa stood up and walked to my side, and instinctively, I put my arm around her, suddenly feeling like she needed to be protected. Mom walked over to stand at my side. The Kerby girls were closing ranks. “Yes,” I admitted. “I’m Alison Kerby. Who are you, and how did you get in?”

  The young man stepped forward and offered a hand. “My apologies,” he said. “I came in looking for you, and we got caught up. My name is Trent Avalon.” He produced a business card, and I took it.

  The card read, “Trent Avalon, executive producer: Down the Shore.” It bore the logo, in the top left corner, of VidChannel, a cable network that specialized in reality television and game shows aimed at an audience of teenagers and college students.

  But apparently it also attracted some senior citizen viewers, because my guests were absolutely agog over Trent, who had apparently been regaling them with tales of his television exploits.

  “Mr. Avalon,” I said, “I don’t mean to be insulting, but what does your TV show have to do with me?”

  Warren’s eyes widened. “You’re not a fan of Down the Shore?” he asked. “I’m absolutely addicted to it!”

  “Not everyone is in our target demographic, Warren,” Trent assured him, then turned his attention back to me. “I’m here to discuss the possibility of us doing a little business together, Ms. Kerby.”

  That wrinkled my brow, all right. “I’m in the guesthouse business, Mr. Avalon,” I said. “You do television. Do you need to have some people stay here at the house?”

  “More or less,” he said. “Is there someplace we can . . .”

  “He wants to have the next season take place here!” Warren beamed. “Oh Alison, you really have to say yes!”

  Four

  “They’re going to film a TV show in your house?” My best friend, Jeannie Rogers, four months pregnant and showing just enough that you wouldn’t think she’d just gained a little weight, was still walking faster than me on our trek from Stud Muffin, the local bakery café, to the Harbor Haven police headquarters. Jeannie was determined to gain weight only in her baby area and nowhere else, so she had decided to exercise until her doctor told her to stop. So far, her doctor had not told Jeannie to stop.

  “Well, I have Larry going over the paperwork, but they’re in a hurry, so I’ll know by this afternoon,” I said. Larry Morwitz is my lawyer, and even though the only time we’d ever done business before was when he represented me in the divorce from The Swine, I knew he could handle reading a contract.

  “What’s it about?” Jeannie asked. The sun shone brightly on her face, and she drank it in. Within six weeks, it would start getting warm, then hot in the afternoons, and neither of us would be walking this quickly, I’d bet. At least Jeannie would have the baby as an excu
se.

  “It’s something called Down the Shore,” I told her. “It’s . . .”

  “Omigod! They’re filming Down the Shore at your house? I love that show!” Jeannie stopped dead in her tracks and stared at me. “How did you manage that?”

  I was a couple of steps ahead before I realized she’d stopped. “The house they were going to use burned down,” I said. “A show about a bunch of drunken kids looking for sex in our own backyard? You watch that?”

  “Oh, it’s way more than that,” Jeannie answered, waving a hand. She started to walk again, and I fell into step with her, but it was hard to keep up. “These kids put on such an attitude, and they think they’re entitled to, like, everything. It’s a riot!”

  “It sounds disgusting.”

  “It is. That’s the best part. There was this one show where this guy, he calls himself Mistah Motion, he went to the Stone Pony, where Bruce Springsteen used to play, and tried to get onstage to sing ‘Born in the USA.’ They threw him out the back door into a Dumpster!” She practically doubled over with laughter.

  I shook my head. I was getting a tidy sum for me (a pittance in the TV business, no doubt, as VidChannel was sort of MTV’s poorer cousin), and was already beginning to question my decision to take it. The world had gone crazy while I slept one night, and I’d missed it. Now I was living in a house with ghosts and senior citizens, and by this evening it was likely to be invaded by four young people, each hoping for fame by being more obnoxious than the other three.

  I used to wonder why people made New Jersey jokes. I don’t anymore.

  Jeannie managed to gather herself to the point that she could ask, “How did they pick your house?”

  “Well, the producer said there were two factors,” I told her. “First, I, um, had the space available for the next three weeks. They only need one room. And even that is just for show—the ‘boys and girls,’ as he calls them, will really be living in trailers parked behind my house.”