Trent nodded agreement. “Absolutely. I’ll tell Ed. I think it’ll look better, anyway. I’m glad we had this talk, Alison.” He walked back into the house to relay our conversation to the director and to reassemble his cast for more “spontaneous” filming.
And I sat down on my front step and wondered what I’d gotten myself into.
Seven
“This is ridiculous.”
My “favorite” guest, the indomitable (and I could think of a few other words) Bernice Antwerp, was enjoying herself in her favorite fashion—she was complaining.
I’d been walking through the front room, about to begin our séance, when Bernice, whom I’d been trying to avoid, had buttonholed me to run down a list of all the things that had been insufficient since she’d arrived. I’ll give you the summary:
Everything.
Now she was on a tear about the evening’s entertainment, which she considered a waste of her time. I bit back the temptation to suggest she lock herself away in her room like Mr. and Mrs. Jones.
“A bunch of grown people standing around pretending they’re in contact with ghosts. It’s undignified,” Bernice went on. I’d stopped listening sometime around when she’d explained that I was a bad hostess because the toilet paper in the bathrooms was rolled with the edge on the back, not the front, so her dissatisfaction with the séance was hardly cutting me to the quick, especially since she’d claimed to be one of the guests most interested in seeing ghosts to begin with.
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” I answered. “The tour was quite clearly advertised as a trip to a haunted guesthouse, and you have seen the way the ghosts make themselves known every day.”
She sniffed. “Simple tricks. I don’t for a moment believe there are spirits in this house.”
“Oh, but there are!” Dolores Santiago, the most ghost to obsessed guest, appeared behind Bernice like Paul or Maxie might, only with a less transparent body. “I’ve gotten readings on my instruments that absolutely confirm the presence of two entities in this house.” She reached into her purse. “I think I have the readouts here. . . .”
“Honestly!” Bernice exploded, and walked away. But I noticed she walked toward the den, where the séance was to be held.
“Thanks for the help, Dolores,” I said.
She looked up, confused. “What help?”
“Never mind. I appreciate it, anyway.”
I looked toward the front door, because even while people were gathering in the den (and the Down the Shore crew was hooking up its power to a truck parked in my driveway), Arlice Crosby was arriving there, looking thoroughly enthralled with the proceedings.
Dolores’s eyes widened when she saw Arlice. “What is she doing here?” she asked.
“I invited Mrs. Crosby earlier today,” I said. “Do you know her?”
“Not really. I’ve seen her around town. I think. Is she going to stay for the séance?”
“That’s why she’s here,” I answered.
Dolores shook her head. “Too many people,” she said. “Too many distractions.” And she shuffled away toward the staircase, which was just as well—I was hurrying to greet Arlice.
“I hope I’m not late,” she said. “I’d hate to have missed it.” I noticed her car parked at the curb—a Prius.
“We would have waited for you,” I said. “We’re honored to have you here with us.”
Arlice waved a hand. “Oh, go on with ya, now,” she said. “Let’s see some spooks.” I nodded, and turned toward the den. “Oh, Alison, wait,” Arlice said, seeming to remember something.
She reached into her purse and pulled out a small royal blue box covered in velvet. “It’s rude to come to a friend’s house empty-handed,” she said. She handed me the box, and I opened it.
Inside was a lovely silver amulet, in the shape of a slightly asymmetrical triangle with lettering in an unfamiliar alphabet on one side, on a chain. It took my breath away.
“It’s lovely,” I said to Arlice, “but I can’t possibly accept it.”
“Don’t be silly. I’d be horribly offended if you turned it down. I would have brought a proper gift, you know, but the invitation only came this afternoon.” She grinned at me.
“This is much more than a proper gift,” I said. “Are you sure . . . ?”
“It’s been in my family for generations,” Arlice answered. “I don’t have any children, and I never wear it. Time for it to start some new traditions, no? Is that little girl I saw over there your daughter?”
I nodded. “Melissa,” I said. “She’s ten.”
“You can pass the amulet on to her, then.” Arlice knew she had me with that.
There just wasn’t a way for me to tactfully reject what must have been a very expensive gift, so I let Arlice clasp it behind my neck, thanked her more than profusely, and headed upstairs to change for what I was already thinking of as “The Show.”
“May I request absolute silence. The spirits will not approach if they are distracted or frightened by noise.” I stood on a platform—okay, a stepstool left from when Melissa was four years old—at one end of my den, the largest room in the house. I was wearing an old terry cloth bathrobe I’d stolen from a hotel almost thirteen years ago on my brief honeymoon (The Swine had to be back in New York after the weekend to attend a meeting on how to get elderly people to give you their Social Security money), which was the closest thing I had to a flowing gown. I had my arms raised in what I thought was the proper pose for an active medium (although I was more of a small).
The spirits of the house—having been given a report on Arlice that I was told had been passed on to Scott McFarlane—were hovering around the ceiling, taking in the crowd with what looked like amusement on Paul and annoyance on Maxie.
I was grateful for the space in the room, because it was packed to the rafters. Besides Arlice and the Senior Plus tour guests (minus the Joneses, who had not emerged from their room but who must have been still breathing, based on the reportage of Linda Jane, who was in the room next to them—“believe me, I can hear them through the walls—they’re alive, okay”), the cast of Down the Shore was present, watching and feigning excited fascination, since the cameras were rolling. In fact, four cameras, but no lights, were being employed, working with the abundant candlelight in the room and nothing else. Trent hadn’t been happy that I wasn’t using the chandelier, but I argued that it would spoil the mood, and he had relented.
Arlice had a place of honor directly to my right. She’d seemed quite pleased with the activity, and heartily amused at the appearance of the Down the Shore cast, in their best pierced and tattooed finery.
Also in the room, watching me make a spectacle of myself, were four cameramen, Ed the director, Trent the producer (sorry, executive producer), two sound men, a guy with headphones whose job was a mystery to me, Melissa, Mom and, at the extreme far side of the room, Jeannie and her husband, Tony, who were barely disguising their amusement.
And Paul and Maxie.
“Frightened by noise?” Maxie, hovering near the ceiling to take in the crowd with no obstructions, glowered at me. “What do you want them to think we are, wimpy ghosts?”
I didn’t answer her, of course. Instead, I went on with my ethereal rant. “I am calling out to the spirits inhabiting this house. We have people here who have questions for you, spirits. There is no reason to be afraid.” I stared directly at Maxie while saying that. “We all welcome you here. We ask you to share your wisdom and your suffering.”
“Suffering?” Paul asked. “What suffering?” He was actually standing near the window, staring out into the backyard. He’d said that Scott McFarlane might come to the house tonight to reassure himself that Arlice was alive, but so far Scott hadn’t arrived. I didn’t know what Paul was afraid could have happened to Scott, but he appeared concerned.
“I am beginning to sense the presence of spirits,” I reported to the gathering, stuffed as they were into a room whose temperature appeared to be going up
by the minute. Warren and Jim, ubiquitous beer bottles in hand, stood at the wall to my left, with satisfied, dazed grins on their faces.
Bernice, dissatisfied (of course) with the lack of adequate seating in the room (despite being given a prime spot on the sofa), was looking annoyed and had complained before I’d begun about her inability to “see anything” from the lower vantage point of the sofa. When I’d informed her that I thought there would be little to see and much to hear, she’d sniffed with discontentment, folded her arms and made a face daring me to produce ghosts.
“Yes,” I continued. “There are definitely—two!—spirits in the room right now! Can you speak to us, spirits? Can you tell us who you were?”
“Abbott and Costello,” Maxie said. Melissa, who thinks Maxie is a riot, giggled.
I ignored her and looked at the crowd. “They say their names are Paul and . . . Hortense.”
“Hortense!” Maxie spat out. “I don’t have to stay here for this!”
I turned to her. “Yes, Hortense. What is that you’re saying? You’re thrilled to be here? Well, we have a whole crowd of people who are just as happy to hear from you. So glad you didn’t disappoint them.”
“How do we know they’re really here?” Bernice demanded. “You could say you hear anything. Why should we believe you?” H-Bomb nodded her head in agreement; in her capacity to be underwhelmed, she was practically a Bernice-in-training.
Luckily, I had anticipated that question, because it was actually one I would have asked a charlatan as obvious as myself. “Ask for a sign, something to be manipulated in this room, and it will be done,” I assured her.
“I’ve seen stuff flying around all week,” Bernice countered sourly. “Let’s see these ghosts of yours do something that you couldn’t have arranged ahead of time. Let’s see them—”
She didn’t have time to finish the sentence, as Maxie reached down and took Bernice’s eyeglasses off her face, then started to rise toward the ceiling with them. Bernice stopped in midsentence and gasped. “Stop that!” she yelled. “Those glasses cost me four hundred dollars!”
One of the camera operators—a woman, I was pleased to see—had been assigned to follow any “freaky” ghostly happenings (the other three—all men—were focused lovingly on the Down the Shore cast).
But the demonstration had certainly gotten the desired effect: All the guests were openmouthed as Maxie returned Bernice’s harlequin glasses, and they broke into a round of applause when it became obvious that Bernice herself was unable to think of a complaint to voice for the occasion.
Dolores, the most studious of the guests, watched the most carefully, placing a wand approximately the size of a surge suppressor for electronics (which I secretly believed it had once been), painted black with red and green lights running up and down one side, on the small end table next to her. It was being used to “measure the vibrations of the paranormal presences,” she had explained. The lights were heavily into the red category right now, so maybe it was really measuring something. Like the strength of the batteries Dolores had placed inside it. She wedged herself in between me and Arlice, determined not to miss any vibrations or further evidence of our nonbreathing visitors.
“What’s that?” Tiffney asked, pointing at Dolores’s thingamajig.
Before Dolores could launch into the technical specifications of the thing, I answered, “A Ghostometer. You can’t have a séance without one.”
Dolores clucked her tongue. “Honestly,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“Are there any others who doubt?” I asked. “Do we have any requests for further demonstrations of our guests’ reality?”
All the way in the back of the room, I could see Jeannie mouth, “Wow.” But my mother did not appear pleased. Normally, she believes that everything I do is absolutely wonderful (and trust me, that’s not as nice as you might think), but her mouth was clenched in disapproval and her eyes narrowed. She was protective of the ghosts, and clearly believed I was exploiting them. I decided to get on with it.
“Not seeing any further objections,” I said, since my mind was apparently racing back to my days as recording secretary of the Ecology Club at Harbor Haven High School, “do we have any questions for our friends from the other side?”
The older guests in the house felt the need to raise their hands and wait to be recognized, but H-Bomb didn’t have that problem. “What’s it like being dead?” she yelled out.
Paul began to respond, “It’s an odd sensation, a little flat. . . .”
But Maxie, grinning, shouted over him, “It sucks!” I passed that information along to the group, who laughed. Except Dolores and, of course, Bernice.
“Is there sex after death?” shouted the larger, more pumped-up guy from the cast, whose name was apparently Rock Starr.
“We don’t know,” said Paul, getting into the spirit (please pardon the expression) of the proceedings. “We don’t like each other that much.”
Again, chuckles when I relayed the responses. But I wasn’t going to let my core audience get overrun by these impetuous kids. I nodded at Dolores. What the hell; she’d been waiting her whole life for this.
“Yes!” she shouted. “What is the proper bandwidth for . . .”
She never got the chance to answer, because a shout from just beside her stopped everyone in the room. It wasn’t a squeal from one of the girls on Down the Shore, and it wasn’t a shout of terror from someone rattled by the ghosts.
It was a scream of pain. And even before it had stopped echoing through the room, Arlice Crosby fell facedown to the floor, bouncing off a cameraman’s leg on the way down.
I jumped off the stepstool and tried to turn her over, but even before I could, Linda Jane was up and trying to revive her. But based on what I’d seen, I had no doubt in my mind that Arlice was dead.
And floating directly behind her, at just about an average man’s height, was my red cloth napkin, folded into the shape of a bandana.
Eight
“So, let’s see if I’ve got this right.” Detective Anita McElone wasn’t happy about being in my house—she never was. But now someone had died here without explanation, and she had insisted that no one leave the room. (The Joneses were being questioned in their room, an interrogation I probably could have sold tickets to and made enough for the season.) “You were holding a séance, and Mrs. Crosby just keeled over and died?”
“That’s exactly what happened,” said Trent Avalon. “She was standing just about . . .”
McElone cut him off. “I was asking Ms. Kerby. Believe me, I’ll get to you as soon as I can.”
The EMS technicians had taken Arlice’s body after getting the okay from McElone. There had been no preliminary word on cause of death, of course, but nobody could see a wound on her anywhere, and there was no blood on the floor or on Arlice. She had not seemed frightened, according to everyone who had been standing near her, but I guess a heart attack can be instantaneous and unexpected. McElone was being thorough, in her own way, which was predictably a somewhat confrontational way.
“What did yousee?” she asked me.
“I wasn’t looking at her when it happened,” I said truthfully. “But I heard her scream, or yelp, or something, and the next thing I knew she was on the floor. By the time I got to her, Linda Jane Smith had already said she had no pulse. She tried doing CPR for a while, but Arlice didn’t respond.” I had taken a class in CPR before I applied for my innkeeper’s license, but Linda Jane was a medic and an RN, and she’d done all she could until the ambulance arrived ten minutes later.
A medic in the house, and there wasn’t a thing we could do for Arlice Crosby. It had already occurred to me that if I hadn’t invited her into a dark, crowded, hot room, she might’ve been alive and enjoying a calm evening sitting on her front porch with the neighbor’s cat, looking at all the larger houses owned by people without as much money as she had.
“Did anybody near her make any sudden moves before she fell?” McElone aske
d.
I shook my head. “Not that I saw. I was looking for the next question.”
“Arlice,” McElone echoed. “Funny how tight you got with her after asking me who she was just this morning.”
“We bonded,” I said. “She insisted I call her Arlice.”
“Interesting,” McElone said. “Did Arlice say anything to you during the . . . event?”
“She didn’t get a chance to ask the ghosts a question, if that’s what you mean,” I answered.
McElone pursed her lips. “Uh-huh. Ghosts. I’m going to go talk to some living people now, okay?”
“Just trying to help,” I said.
“Yeah. And by the way?”
“Yes?” I asked.
“Nice bathrobe.” Then McElone turned her attention back to the crowd. So I wandered through the room, being barraged by everyone I passed.
“What happened?”
“Is she dead?”
“When can we go back to the game room?” Attaboy, Warren.
I did what I could to reassure everyone that this was a routine inquiry by the police after an unexplained death, but the fact was, it didn’t feel like one. Maybe it’s because I’ve been involved in such things with McElone before, but her demeanor was definitely more suspicious than if she’d thought it was a simple heart attack. Maybe losing one of the wealthiest citizens in town and a patron of the arts for two counties in any direction had something to do with the detective’s grumpy attitude.
By the time I got to the back of the room, where Mom and Melissa were talking to Jeannie and Tony, I must have looked like I’d been through a prize fight with Mike Tyson.
“Why are the police still here?” Mom wanted to know after clucking over me. “Your friend the detective is questioning everyone in the room.”
“She’s not my friend, and I don’t know,” I answered. “McElone is acting like something criminal happened here, and I don’t like the way she’s looking at me. Did any of you see anything?”
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