The Hostess With the Ghostess

by E. J. Copperman

  “I can’t,” Maxie told her, although she wasn’t the one Melissa had been asking. Maxie hates it when anything isn’t about her.

  Now I try very hard not to breathe in very strongly. Melissa adopted a little ghost dog a while back, and although Lester is very sweet and loving and transparent, he still manages to qualify for my allergies. I’m on three antihistamines daily and I still need to stay away from Lester. We were only one floor away from him, assuming he was staying up in Melissa’s attic bedroom like he was supposed to. But puppies—and Lester will always be a puppy—don’t always do what they’re supposed to.

  I took a sniff anyway and immediately sneezed. “I’m not getting anything,” I told Liss when I recovered.

  “I think I am,” Josh told us. “Sort of a burning rubber kind of smell, Melissa?”

  “Is that it?” she asked. “Could be. Fits in with stretching.”

  “Swell,” I said. “Now I don’t know what was going on in this room and I have to air it out to make it habitable for the next guest.” I walked to the window and opened it. The room is too small to have a ceiling fan or I would have turned it on.

  “What do you think could have caused that?” Josh said to me.

  The whole thing was starting to make me weary. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I know who would have an idea.”

  “Who?” Liss asked.

  “Paul.”

  Chapter 3

  “I want to take out a personal ad,” I said.

  Phyllis Coates, editor, publisher, and janitorial staff for the Harbor Haven Chronicle, looked at me, and the only word that came to my mind was askance. “I thought you got married.”

  “I did,” I told her with an emphatic nod. “It’s not that kind of personal ad.”

  “Of course not.” Phyllis had a desktop computer displaying the front page she was composing and a laptop open on the only semiclean area of her massive desk, which was piled almost to the ceiling with papers. Phyllis believes in technology in the sense that she can’t disprove it exists. “So what kind of personal ad is it? Or is that too personal?”

  I looked around futilely for a place to sit. There is one chair in Phyllis’s office, and it contains Phyllis. “That’s very amusing,” I told her. “You should write for a living. This ad’s the kind you post when you’re hoping to connect with somebody but you don’t know where he is, so you hope he sees it and get in touch with you.”

  “What is this, 1944?” asked my friend. “You going to meet him under the big clock in Grand Central Terminal after the war is over?” Phyllis has a sense of romance, I’m sure, but it is buried under twenty years of working for the New York Daily News followed by taking over the Chronicle and treating it like a real newspaper. “You don’t have an e-mail address, a Facebook page, a cell phone number? Nothing?”

  “He’s not that kind of a friend,” I said.

  “The kind who’s alive in the twenty-first century?”

  Well, if you want to get technical . . . “I don’t have any contact information. You going to take my money for the ad or not?”

  “I’ll take the ad, but I’m not taking your money.” Phyllis punched a few keys and looked at me. “You’re family, and this is a stupid ad. What do you want it to say?”

  I repressed my desire to challenge her use of the word stupid and moved on. I am an adult. “I can’t just fill out a form?” I asked.

  “Nope. We haven’t had an ad like this in years. Maybe never. Don’t have a form for it. Tell me what you want to say.” Phyllis is a reporter because she is a natural snoop and she found a way to make it pay for her. She certainly had a form on file for a classified ad; she just wanted to hear me say the words in mine so she could find something out.

  Good luck to her with what I was going to say. “Okay, write this: To Casper, All is forgiven. Brother Richard is waiting. Please come home ASAP. A. K.”

  I finished, and Phyllis looked at me for a long moment. “How do I spell ‘Casper’?” she asked.

  “With an e, like the friendly ghost.”

  Phyllis has heard the stories about my house and knows about the sign I hung right by my entrance, but she’s a newswoman and does not rely on anything except that which she can prove to be true. She needs two reliable sources to print that I have ghosts in my house, and to be fair, she’s never really looked for them. So she didn’t bat an eyelid and said, “Uh-huh.”

  “Thanks.” I stood and picked up my summer tote bag, which makes me look like a tourist so that no real tourists ask me questions. It’s bad business, but it speeds up my day immeasurably.

  “What makes you think your friend is going to be reading a local paper if you have no idea where he is?” Phyllis asked me before I could escape her tiny office. “Why not go to a paper with an international circulation, or at least one that goes across the country?”

  “Two reasons,” I said.

  “Besides that you knew I wouldn’t charge you,” Phyllis said.

  “One reason,” I allowed. “My friend used to live here in town, and he’ll be checking the Chronicle online just to keep up. He’s really predictable in some ways.”

  “I’ll get it out on the website in five minutes. Does your husband know you’re taking out personal ads to lure men back to town?” she asked.

  “It was his idea.” I figured I’d leave her with that, because it was true and because I wasn’t crazy about the innuendo.

  Phyllis didn’t stare at me; she doesn’t believe in letting on when she’s surprised. But I saw her move toward her computer and start typing when I left the office. As I headed down the street to my car, a tourist asked me if I could direct her to a good souvenir store—a real one, “not a tourist trap.”

  The tote bag doesn’t always work.

  #

  Placing the ad for Paul’s attention was clearly a long shot, but this was a situation that required me to try every lamebrain idea I might have, even if my husband got it first. So in the interest of flailing out in every direction, my next stop was to Madame Lorraine, the local medium.

  I know, I know. I can see and hear ghosts, so what did I need with a medium? It’s a fair question, but the fact is that I can only communicate with those spirits in my presence. For example, I noticed a lovely older man floating just above Madame Lorraine’s walk-in storefront on Ocean Avenue. He was actually dressed as a doorman for a ritzy apartment building and tipped his cap to me as I walked in. He seemed very surprised when I waved at him and nodded my head. I was sorry I didn’t have any change to tip him with.

  What I needed was someone in touch with dead people who might have some Ghosternet access. Free Die-Fi, if you will. The only ghost I knew like that was Paul, and maybe in six months, Richard. Neither of those was going to be helpful today.

  Madame Lorraine had apparently not opened for the day yet because her door was locked. I thought a serious medium should have known I was coming, but who was I to tell a woman how to do her business? Luckily there was a buzzer next to the door, and I pushed the button.

  “What?” came a voice through the squawk box.

  Customer service. I took a note for my own hospitality enterprise and pushed the button as I spoke. “Madame Lorraine? It’s Alison Kerby.” I figured my ghost-related reputation had surely made its way to the madame. Maybe she’d give me a break on the fee out of professional courtesy. What? Stranger things have happened.

  “So?” Seriously, this woman’s skill in making a new customer feel welcome was unparalleled, just not in the way she probably hoped.

  “So may I come in for a moment?”

  The voice on the other end sounded so thoroughly weary and disgusted with the prospect that it was something of a shock that she said, “Yeah. Gimme a minute.” But it was only a few seconds before the buzzer sounded and I pushed the glass door of Madame Lorraine’s establishment open and entered.

  I’d seen her around town before, so it was no surprise that Madame Lorraine was a trim, somewhat dusty-lo
oking woman in her fifties with a single gray braid going down from the nape of her neck to the small of her back. The shawl around her shoulders, no doubt hand-crocheted by someone who was not Madame Lorraine, was a nice touch.

  “So what do you want?”

  I guessed my hostess did not act this way with most paying customers, but every entrepreneur had her own style. “I’m hoping you can get me in touch with a friend who has gone on to the next world,” I said.

  “You mean a dead person?” Madame Lorraine was walking around turning on lights (dim) and straightening pillows (worn).

  “Yes, I guess I do.”

  “Then why’d you say it like that? ‘Gone on to the next world’?”

  “I don’t know. I thought you’d like it.”

  “You were wrong.” The room was now set up as I assumed Madame Lorraine wanted it, and she walked to the far side of the table at its center, with five chairs around it in addition to the one she plopped herself into. “I thought you could talk to ghosts yourself. What do you need me for?”

  So that was it. Madame Lorraine didn’t like me horning in on her territory, even though I wasn’t. No sense getting into that with her. Maybe I could be humble and get her on my side. “I can talk to ghosts who are in the room with me, the ones I can see,” I told her. “I can’t contact the ones out of my sight line. I was hoping you might be able to do that for me.”

  “You’re one of those debunkers, aren’t you?” Madame Lorraine looked me in the eye like a lion tamer. She didn’t have a chair and a whip, but the effect was there.

  “I’m a what?” I honestly had no idea what she meant.

  “Don’t play dumb with me,” she said.

  “I’m not playing. I really am dumb. What are you talking about?”

  “You come to places like mine and you look for ways that I’m cheating or something.” Madame Lorraine looked positively distraught. “Houdini used to do it all the time, walk in and debunk people. Well, I’m a real sensitive. So do your worst! You won’t find anything here to debunk!” She folded her arms defiantly.

  I took a moment and then pointed at the chair opposite hers. “May I sit down?” I asked.

  Madame Lorraine’s eyes narrowed, trying to figure out what devious ploy I might be implementing. “Sure.”

  I took the seat and lowered my voice to a confidential, hopeful tone. “Madame Lorraine,” I said, “I’m not trying to disprove anything here. I don’t want to defame you.”

  “Debunk.”

  “Right. Sorry. Debunk. I’m not doing that. I need to get in touch with a friend who is a ghost, and I can’t do it myself. Will you please help me?”

  She stared at me for a long moment, and her eyes softened. “Man, you’re good,” she said.

  The only way to deal with someone who has already decided on her own reality is to completely ignore it and keep on plowing through. “His name is Paul Harrison, and he could be pretty much anywhere,” I told Madame Lorraine. “Any chance you might be able to get in touch with him?”

  “Geography is not a factor for me,” she answered. “The departed are reachable through the power of sensitivity.”

  I had no idea what that meant, but it was clear Madame Lorraine was now on my side, or at least was considering my request as she would that of anyone who walked through her door. “Is there anything I can tell you that will help?” I asked her.

  She blew a puff of air out one side of her mouth in derision. “It’s not what you can tell me,” she said. “It’s what I can tell you.”

  I refrained from asking what she could tell me. At this point, the less I talked, the better off I would be. I did my very best to look entranced and nodded a bit in her direction to literally bow to her authority.

  It seemed to work; Madame Lorraine closed her eyes with great theatricality and leaned her head back on the chair. She did not make “ghostly” sounds, for which I was grateful. She breathed in deeply and let the breath out slowly a number of times, to the point that I was afraid she might actually fall asleep before I could get any information.

  Then suddenly her demeanor changed, although her eyes did not open. She sat up straight in the chair and seemed to be staring at me through her eyelids; the effect was one of intimidation and wonder, if such a thing is possible.

  “Paul Harrison was a seeker of truth,” she intoned. That was true if you looked at it from a certain perspective; Paul was a private investigator who was generally seeking truth, but then so few people actually search for lies when they can avoid them. “You loved him, and you have some unfinished business.”

  Now, don’t get me wrong. I liked Paul just fine, and he was a good friend whom I missed on a daily basis, but “loved” would be something of a stretch. As for “unfinished business,” I figured that was boilerplate for anyone Madame Lorraine might be favoring with her shtick. But I said nothing because I still held out hope she might be able to get a message to Paul through the Living section of the Ghosternet’s Craigslist.

  “Paul Harrison left you in a moment of stress,” Madame Lorraine continued. Now, that was open to interpretation. Paul had been trying an experiment with electricity while a man was about to shoot at me; that was true. But he hadn’t left until days later, having stuck around for my wedding to Josh. Madame Lorraine’s batting average was lowering.

  “He was searching for a new level,” she said. Again, that might have been a general comment she used all the time, but it was true that Paul had been trying to evolve into the next level of existence and thought this experiment would propel him into it. So it was possible Madame Lorraine had some insight—or that I was stretching my disbelief. Either way, I let her go on.

  “He has been a wanderer, roaming the Earth with no definite destination. He feels spurned and alienated, and he searches for the warmth he knew.”

  She was back to the “loved” thing, I thought, and that was clearly the wrong road. I almost stopped her right there, but she held up a hand, palm out, like she was trying to get me to stop crossing the street until a truck went by.

  “He seeks his brother,” Madame Lorraine said.

  Damn, she was good!

  Chapter 4

  Madame Lorraine had come out of what she called her “heightened state” a few moments later and told me she’d gotten a very strong impression that Paul was looking for his younger brother. Richard was his older brother, so I was once again skeptical, but when I told Ms. Lorraine that, she simply said it had been hazy where she was and she hadn’t gotten a good look.

  Okay.

  She promised she would try to narrow down Paul’s location and give me an idea of where to look for him. I asked her to try to get across the message that his brother—whose name I did not disclose to the madame—was where Paul used to stay and that he should come back as soon as he could. Then I paid Madame Lorraine the fee she asked, which I thought was a pretty hefty sum for five minutes of theatrics. But then again, I was someone who sees ghosts asking someone who claimed to communicate with them for help. It wasn’t exactly the usual business relationship.

  I drove back to the guesthouse wondering if I’d just been taken for a ride. Granted, I hadn’t exactly gambled the mortgage money on Madame Lorraine, but I don’t like the feeling that someone had seen me as a sucker and played me. I decided not to believe that Madame Lorraine was a real medium. That would teach her.

  Didn’t make me feel better about my $35, but it was something.

  By the time I got my ancient Volvo wagon to my driveway, I had come to the conclusion that the morning (post–spook show, which had been slightly less lackluster) had been a waste of time. Paul wasn’t necessarily going to read the Chronicle if he was in Mumbai or even Indianapolis, and Madame Lorraine couldn’t contact him even if she could write “Surrender Paul” in the sky with her broom smoke. I’d been deluding myself. I needed to act less like an innkeeper and more like a private investigator if I wanted to find my missing friend soon.

  So I sort of slu
mped into the kitchen through my back door. Melissa was at school, winding down the year by gearing up for a standardized test. Josh was at Madison Paints with his grandfather Sy, who in his midnineties still showed up three days a week. Mom and Dad had of course gone home the night before and weren’t coming back today unless I called, which I had no intention of doing. Everett still spends some days at the local gas station, the Fuel Pit, where he died. He thinks of it as standing guard at his post and will not be dissuaded. Maxie thinks it’s cute and will sometimes go and try to distract her husband but had chosen not to do so today.

  That meant Maxie and three of my guests would be in the house. Richard had not made an appearance that morning before I’d left, leaving me to wonder what he might have been doing and where he might have been doing it. But on entering the house, I didn’t hear anyone at all, which is unusual. I walked through the kitchen, putting my tote bag on the center island, and into the den.

  It’s the largest room in the house, really meant to be a formal dining room, which I’ve used it for twice in four years. The rest of the time, I use the den as a central gathering area where guests can relax, read a book, do some knitting, or take a nap on one of the sofas if they feel like it. Most of a vacation down the shore is about relaxing, particularly for my Senior Plus Tours guests. The ghosts are just an added attraction.

  At the moment it held just one person, and he wouldn’t have been visible to the average visitor. Richard was floating with his back to me, staring into the fireplace that wasn’t lit, largely because it was a seventy-degree day, and besides, the fireplace didn’t work. That was something I had meant to start work on before a beam in the ceiling had been shot and immediately got to the top of the priority list.

  Apparently I hadn’t made much noise walking in because Richard didn’t turn to look at me. He just kept staring into that empty space where a fire might have been in the early twentieth century.

  “Something I can help you with, Richard?” I asked.

  I thought I’d made an effort to keep my voice gentle, but clearly Richard would have disagreed because he spun around as if pounced upon by some wild beast, hands up defensively and eyes wide. He corrected himself after a moment and said, “Excuse me, Alison. I was startled.”