An Uninvited Ghost

by E. J. Copperman

  “I’ve screened all the tape you shot last night,” she said to Trent after we settled into her extremely neat, but still undersized, cubicle. “And aside from some movement in one corner of the screen when Arlice Crosby fell over, there isn’t a single shot of her in the lot. How do you explain that?”

  “Simple,” Trent replied. “The camera operators were instructed to keep our cast in frame at all time. We also had a camera on Alison because she was running the séance. Everyone else was focused on our cast. In fact, they were told to avoid shooting the houseguests or anyone else at all if possible.”

  “Why is that?” McElone asked.

  Trent shrugged. “We make television for an audience of twelve-to-twenty-four-year-olds. Do you think they’re interested in watching a bunch of people in their seventies and eighties? Besides, anyone shown on-screen has to sign a waiver, or I’d have to spend money pixelating their faces out of the scene. I wasn’t interested in getting everybody there to sign off unless it was completely necessary.”

  “You didn’t know something was going to happen that you wouldn’t want to show on camera?” McElone was stretching, for sure.

  Trent’s face practically inverted. “Of course not. If I knew someone was going to die right there in the room while we were talking about ghosts, don’t you think I’d have had a camera and a light on her? It’s already going to be my highest-rated show of the year.”

  Television people have an interesting idea of morality. McElone turned to me. “I assume by now your network of spies have told you Mrs. Crosby did not die of natural causes.”

  “Network of spies? This whole town thinks I’m a lunatic who believes there are dead people hanging out in her house. Who’s going to join my network of spies?” I crossed my arms and sat back like a petulant thirteen-year-old.

  McElone blew out some air. “You know Mrs. Crosby didn’t die of a heart attack, right?”

  I tilted my head and nodded in what I’ve been told is a sheepish manner, although I’ve never actually studied sheep body language. “Right.”

  “So we’re considering her death a homicide, and that means someone in the room with you last night was responsible for it.” McElone stood up from her desk and put her hands on her hips. She looked at Trent. “Every witness—and the videotape—places you nowhere near Mrs. Crosby when she died,” she told him. Then she turned to me. “Has anyone in the house said anything to you that might give us a direction? Did anyone see anything they didn’t tell the police, but did tell their friendly innkeeper?”

  There was no sense in holding back. “As a matter of fact, a number of people have told me they saw something, but nobody knows exactly what, and no two stories match at all.”

  McElone reached into her desk drawer for a pad and pen. She seemed surprised, as if she hadn’t expected me to offer anything of note. I’d show her. “Who said something, and what did they say?” she asked, sitting back down behind her desk to take notes.

  “Well, you know that Tony Mandorisi said he’d seen something change Arlice’s expression immediately preceding her death,” I started.

  “Yes,” McElone agreed, nodding her head. “Mr. Mandorisi told me that last night. But he didn’t see anything that could be considered suspicious, exactly.”

  “Let me finish,” I insisted. I was going to be of use to this woman if it killed me. Or she did. “Then, late last night, my daughter, Melissa, told me she’d seen one of my guests walk behind Arlice and that Arlice seemed to react, and then fell over.”

  “Which one of your guests?”

  I frowned. “Do I have to say?”

  I got a sharp look from McElone. “No, this is the police department. We don’t want you to do anything that might cause you the least bit of inconvenience, especially if it might help solve a prominent citizen’s murder. Of course you have to say. But I promise I won’t tell your guest where I got the information, unless it amuses me to do so.”

  That wasn’t very reassuring. “Linda Jane Smith,” I grumbled.

  “The one-legged ex-Army medic?”

  “You’re very tactful. Yes.”

  “Why would she want to kill Arlice Crosby?” McElone asked.

  “How would I know? I’m just telling you what Melissa said. And then another guest, Jim Bridges, said he saw Tiffney pass behind Arlice at just about the same moment Melissa said Linda Jane was there, that Arlice looked startled, and then she collapsed.”

  “Wait a minute!” Trent started. “If you’re trying to implicate Tiffney . . .”

  “Tiffney got a last name?” McElone was taking notes.

  “Warburton,” Trent said. “She’s one of my cast members. But she prefers just Tiffney.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  I could almost see the wheels spinning in Trent’s brain—was it better for the show for Tiffney to be a suspect, or wrongly accused? It took a moment before he said, “And I can tell you, she had no reason to want to kill Mrs. . . . Mrs. . . .”

  “Crosby,” I reminded him. “It’s touching how you remember.”

  “Doesn’t mean I don’t care,” Trent said. “Besides, you’ve seen all the footage, Detective. I’m willing to bet you saw nothing to indicate Tiff did anything wrong.”

  McElone and I ignored him.

  “Why didn’t I hear this last night?” she wanted to know.

  “Well, Jim and his friend Warren seemed to want to avoid the police, but didn’t have a problem talking to me. And Melissa was asleep.”

  McElone regained her composure and nodded. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

  “I left a message for you. I figured you’d get back to me when you wanted to hear what I had to say.”

  She stood up again. Either she couldn’t sit still, or McElone was doing the slowest aerobic exercise routine in history. “Okay. Thank you for your cooperation, both of you. You’re free to leave.”

  A swell expression of gratitude for all I’d given her, but I was happy to get out of there. Trent and I stood up and gathered our meager belongings (my purse, and his nothing) in preparation for exiting the premises.

  “There’s just one thing,” McElone said, as if just thinking of it that moment. “This is not the death of an ordinary citizen. Arlice Crosby was very, very wealthy, and that means a lot of people might have thought they’d benefit from her death. Since this is now a homicide investigation, and the crime took place in your guesthouse, I’m going to have to insist that no one leave the house, at least not permanently, until we have had the opportunity to investigate further. So tell the guests they’re staying with you until I give you further notice.”

  It was my turn to bulge my eyes and cough, and I probably turned purple at the same time just to make it more colorful. “What?” I managed to choke out.

  “You heard me,” McElone said. “Until we figure out who the killer is, nobody’s leaving your house.”

  Twelve

  Not surprisingly, neither Trent nor I said much on the ride back to the house. I imagine each of us was thinking about the effect McElone’s investigation—and her latest pronouncement—would have on our jobs. At least I know I was.

  Technically, McElone didn’t have the legal authority to keep everyone in my house, but she could require that they not leave the state until she had managed to sort out what happened to Arlice Crosby. Since the Senior Plus guests were scheduled to leave Wednesday, still five days off, it wasn’t imperative I tell them right away, but if there were travel plans to be changed, it was probably better they knew in advance. I girded myself to break the news, especially to the always sunny Bernice Antwerp. Maybe I’d start with Linda Jane first.

  Slightly more worrisome from my business perspective was the fact that two more guests—who weren’t part of Senior Plus Tours—were due on Tuesday, a day before everyone else was moving out, a couple I’d booked before I knew Trent would be taking the downstairs bedroom to not film his cast in. Rance would let me know if Senior Plus was sending anyone else my way
after he saw the evaluation forms my current guests would fill out. I was trying not to think about those.

  With more guests on my mind, converting the attic was making more and more sense to me. Sure, it wouldn’t be ready by Tuesday, but hey, the next time there was a murder in the house, I’d be ready.

  I looked over at Trent, who was back in his “exhausted producer” mode, leaning his head back on the rest, eyes closed, with an expression so put-upon that Job himself would probably have offered the guy a cookie.

  “So it’s fun being a TV producer, right?” I asked.

  No answer. I shut up and drove.

  When we got back to the house, I headed to the room Linda Jane and Dolores were sharing and found neither there. Not surprising—the guests (minus the beyond-belief Joneses) didn’t spend much time in their rooms; they were in other parts of the house or out exploring.

  I eventually found Linda Jane in the library, brushing up on her Steinbeck. When I told her about the police investigation and McElone’s requirement that she stay in New Jersey, she nodded.

  “Can I stay here?” she asked. “I don’t want to have to move to a hotel or something, and besides, if we have to remain beyond Wednesday, I should stay in the house until Senior Plus sends another RN, in case of an emergency with the guests.”

  “Sure, I’ll work it out,” I said, wondering how in hell I’d do that.

  “It’s an awful thing about poor Mrs. Crosby. That someone would do that to her deliberately. I hear she was something of a local celebrity, but she wasn’t famous enough to make it to Kansas. I never even spoke to her. She seemed like a nice woman, though.”

  “She was. And I just met her yesterday.”

  “I was standing almost right behind her when she fell,” Linda Jane volunteered.

  “Did you see anything? Anyone near her?”

  “To tell the truth, I was looking at you,” she said. “I didn’t even know Mrs. Crosby was down until someone yelled, and then my medical training took over.”

  There wasn’t much more to say. I was tempted to ask Linda Jane if she’d pass on to Dolores the news that they were both under house arrest, but I knew I had to suck it up and be a good innkeeper and tell her myself.

  But first, I went to pick up my daughter from school. I told Melissa that McElone wanted to talk to her, and she asked why.

  “Because of what you saw last night,” I told her.

  Melissa stopped and thought for a moment. “You mean about Mrs. Crosby falling down like that?” she asked.

  There was something odd in her tone. “Yes, honey. The detective needs to ask you what you saw when that happened.”

  “Did somebody commit a crime when she fell?” Melissa asked. I was starting to wonder if she and I were having the same conversation.

  “Yes, baby. I’m afraid so. Someone killed Mrs. Crosby.” I guessed Melissa went to sleep thinking Arlice had died of a heart attack, but then why had she made a point of talking about Linda Jane?

  Melissa gasped. “Really? That’s so sad.”

  “I’m afraid so. And Detective McElone will want to ask you about what you saw just before she died.”

  “Is she asking everyone?” Melissa looked a little scared; she didn’t want to have to talk to the police.

  “Well, she spoke to most of the people in the room last night while you were sleeping, but she didn’t know it was a murder then. I imagine she’ll want to talk to some of the rest of us again, as well.”

  “What should I tell her?” Melissa asked.

  “Tell her the truth. Always tell her the truth. Tell her what you told me when I was carrying you up to bed.” I didn’t want to be accused of coaching my daughter, but it seemed she was really confused about what McElone might want to know from her.

  “When you were carrying me up?” Melissa asked. “What did I tell you?”

  “You don’t remember?” Uh-oh.

  “No. I just remember waking up in my bed this morning. I don’t really remember you carrying me up.” Now she looked scared.

  I patted her on the hand. “Don’t worry, baby,” I said. “Just answer the detective’s questions, and you’ll be fine.” Maybe a little coaching wouldn’t be an awful thing, after all. “Just tell her about seeing Linda Jane.”

  “The lady with the metal leg?”

  I nodded. “Yes. Tell the detective how you saw her bump Mrs. Crosby right before she fell over.”

  Melissa narrowed her eyes—she calls it “crinkling”—and lowered her head a little. That wasn’t a good sign—it meant she was thinking. After a long pause, she asked, “Is that what I told you when you were carrying me upstairs?”

  I just nodded. This wasn’t going the way I had anticipated.

  “I don’t remember that, Mom,” Melissa said.

  Despite myself, I gulped. “You don’t?” I asked.

  “No. I think maybe I was dreaming.”

  Double uh-oh.

  Thirteen

  “You sure you want to make just one room?” Tony Mandorisi and I were taking a look at the attic, which is code for “I got Tony to come and tell me what was practical and what wasn’t.” He stood in the middle of the space, one foot on each of two beams. “There’s plenty of space here for two.”

  “I’d have to go back to the town for approval to have more than two more people in the house,” I told him. “It requires a different license. Besides, I want to market this as a luxury suite, so I can charge more for it and only rent it out when someone really wants a special vacation.” I thought of the Joneses; what they’d do with a space like this was something I preferred not to imagine.

  Tony nodded. “Well, clearly the first order of business is at least a plywood floor, and you should be doubling your insulation anyway, because at some point, you might have guests during the winter, and besides, you live here. You want to keep your heating bills down. During the summer, air conditioning is going to be expensive up here. Insulation is job one.”

  “Yeah, and then I have to put up walls. Tell me the stuff I wouldn’t figure out on my own.”

  He wrapped his arms around his chest like he was hugging himself. Tony’s not that starved for affection; that’s just what he does when he’s trying to envision a project completed.

  “Well, with the sloping roof, you don’t have tons of headroom on the sides, but a lot in the center,” he began. “So if you want to make it a real suite and put in a bath up here, you could do it near the side, where you don’t need that much headroom, and even put in a skylight if you wanted.”

  Maxie, wearing a pair of red overalls over another in a series of black T-shirts, floated up through the floor near the window and spied us immediately. “What’s he doing here?” she grumbled. Maxie had developed a little crush on Tony when she’d first seen him, and when it sunk in that his reciprocating was both physically impossible and (more appalling to Maxie) completely undesired on Tony’s part, she decided to resent him. I ignored her and instead watched Tony as he looked around the whole open space.

  “If you really want to get a high-end clientele, particularly one that’s younger than your current crop, you might put a loft bed in here,” he went on. “It would make for a little nook underneath, make it feel like an apartment, but you’d have to make sure it was for people who don’t mind climbing up a little.”

  “What’s this about?” Maxie demanded. “I thought we’d decided you weren’t doing anything up here.”

  “We didn’t decide anything,” I told her, and Tony immediately looked alarmed.

  “Is she here?” he asked. He can’t see the ghosts, but he knows about Maxie in particular, and she scares him. With good reason.

  “Maxie is not pleased that I’m considering renovations in the attic,” I informed him.

  Tony’s eyes widened, and he started walking in circles, careful to always step on a beam. Once a contractor, always a contractor. “Where is she?”

  “Over there.” I pointed, and just to be contrary, Maxie
moved closer to Tony. I did not revise my estimate, so he looked where she used to be.

  “I told you I don’t want anyone up here,” Maxie whined. “This is my room.”

  “You don’t get a room,” I insisted. “I have to make enough money to keep this house and send my daughter to college.”

  “She’s ten.”

  “Right, which means I’m already about ten years behind on saving for her education.” I walked past Tony, who was staring up into the rafters. “Look Maxie, I understand you need some privacy once in a while, but I need to be able to house more guests so that we can keep the guesthouse going. You can understand that, right?”

  “No, I can’t,” Maxie pouted. “You already have all those people downstairs. That’s enough.”

  “What’s she saying?” Tony wanted to know. “Is it about me?”

  Maxie rolled her eyes heavenward. “Men.”

  “No,” I answered him. “It’s about her selfish desire for a dusty attic weighed against my need to generate income. Some of us,” I directed at Maxie, “don’t have to worry about such things.”

  “Yeah, being dead’s a real relief,” she groused. “If you need the extra room so badly, fix up the basement.”

  “Have you seen the basement? There are posts holding up the ceiling and, oh yeah, a furnace down there.”

  “You’re so negative,” Maxie said.

  “By the way,” I asked, since she was there anyway and because I wanted to change the subject, “has Paul said anything about hearing from Arlice Crosby?”

  “Who?” Maxie can exhibit a terrific capacity to not think about anyone besides herself.

  “The woman who died here last night,” I reminded her.

  “He didn’t say anything to me. Why, are you expecting a message or something?” Maxie’s outfit changed into her typical blue jeans with chains hanging off the belt, black boots and a black T-shirt, this one bearing the slogan “Will Build to Suit.” I had no idea what that meant.

  “I was hoping she might give us some insight into who killed her,” I said.