The Hostess With the Ghostess

by E. J. Copperman

  Everett was scanning the room, presumably for a suitable blunt instrument to immobilize Cassidy. He rushed out of the room without comment, no doubt looking for something familiar to him like his service weapon, which I’m not even sure is real.

  “No one will tell, I’m sure,” Melissa said. She was stalling. “I’m sure everyone here would promise.”

  “Oh, no,” Eduardo said. “I’d tell in a second.” The guests were enjoying what they saw as their ultimate spook show just a little too much.

  Cassidy actually gestured toward him with the gun. “See?” she said to Melissa. She turned back toward Josh. “Get out of the way. I need that voice recorder.”

  I saw an opening. “Because it proves you killed Richard Harrison,” I said.

  Richard was shaking his head. “No,” he practically whimpered.

  I’d faced the barrel of a gun too many times in the past few years after having gone all those years before without it happening once. It has gone from something that terrified me from head to foot into something that really annoys the living hell out of me. It’s not that I don’t care if I get shot; it’s that the utter lack of imagination in holding me in check with a gun is offensive to my intelligence.

  “That’s not it,” Cassidy said. “I told you. He was just an annoyance.”

  I heard Richard make a noise like something caught him in the throat.

  My father rose through the floor holding a rubber mallet inside his jacket. “This?” he asked.

  But I had other plans. I shook my head, and Dad stopped where he was. “What?”

  “An annoyance? That man was doing all he could to help you, and he was an annoyance?” I didn’t dare steal a glance at Richard. “He loved you.”

  Cassidy Van Doren made what was perhaps the second biggest mistake of her life. She laughed. “He loved me?” She looked at Braden. “Did you hear that?” The two of them almost doubled over in hysterics.

  I knew that would do it. Richard, bellowing with a rage I’ll bet even Paul wouldn’t have thought possible, launched himself at Cassidy and caught her at the legs. She fell backward at the impact and landed on her back, the gun flying out of her hand. I was afraid it would go off, but Penny Desmond, the closest person to Cassidy when she fell, caught it neatly and held it out toward me. “Is this what I’m supposed to do?” she asked.

  “Yes, Penny. That is exactly what you were supposed to do. Thank you.” I grabbed the gun and turned it around to point the barrel at the prone Cassidy, who might not have known Richard was next to her sobbing. The only reason she could have been aware was that he was also punching the floor in frustration, and her face was in the way. She probably didn’t feel it because his fist went all the way through the floor. It takes great focus for a ghost to affect something in the physical world like that. Richard was pretty steamed.

  Cassidy didn’t appear to be moving anytime soon, so I pivoted to point the gun at her mother and stepsiblings.

  But Adrian, Braden, and Erika had all run for the door. I heard a car starting up outside and knew it was far too late to catch them. So I did something even better.

  I called McElone.

  “That was wonderful,” Eduardo DiSica said after the guests had finished applauding. “You really topped yourself.”

  The only guests not obviously thrilled with the “performance” were Greg Lewis and Abby Lesniak, but that was only because they couldn’t possibly have broken eye contact the whole time the melodrama was playing out in front of them. I doubt they had any idea what had just taken place.

  “It was great,” Abby said.

  “Great,” Greg echoed.

  But then I felt my daughter’s arms around my waist and my husband’s around my shoulders, and my mother was standing nearby because I felt her warm hand on my back. My father, rubber mallet in hand, was hovering over Mom, and Paul was attending to his brother, who sat stunned and no longer violent on the floor next to Cassidy, who was breathing and uninjured to the naked eye but not moving.

  “What are we gonna do with this guy?” Maxie asked Everett, who had returned no doubt from the kitchen holding the baseball bat I keep in the closet. It’s a long story. She gestured toward Keith Johnson, who no longer seemed to be straining against her grip.

  “Is there jail for people like us?” Everett asked. “He did try to kill the ghost lady.” That’s me.

  “I didn’t!” Johnson insisted. “I was just trying to scare her, honest!” Given the level of honesty we’d gotten from him, I saw no reason to believe that.

  “Paul,” I said. He looked up from Richard, who struggled to get into a standing position and then floated a few inches above the prone Cassidy. “Do you remember when all those ghosts were here after we held that fake séance?”

  “A fake séance?” Madame Lorraine was appalled.

  “The thing about donating ectoplasm to create a kind of cage, a solitary confinement, for a person like me?” Paul shuddered a bit even thinking about it.

  “That’s what I had in mind.” I nodded my head toward Keith Johnson.

  Johnson’s eyes looked absolutely terrified. “No. Really. I didn’t want to hurt anybody. Please!”

  I had never intended to condemn him to something so permanent and awful, and I doubt Paul even knew how to implement it. But keeping Keith Johnson away had become a serious priority. “There’s one other way,” I said.

  “Anything!” Johnson put his hands together as if in prayer. Granted, they were behind him because Maxie was still holding him, but it was the gesture that mattered. I thought I was a fairly poor deity to choose but didn’t see how I could argue.

  “You need to leave this house, this town, this state and never come back,” I said. “If you’re spotted by any ghost in this area anytime ever, they’ll know what to do. Paul will see to it.”

  Johnson was already nodding before Paul could put on a look of complete conviction on his face.

  “Absolutely! I promise. I’ll leave now!” He looked at Maxie, who was still holding him in place. “Just let me go!”

  Maxie looked at me. I walked up close to Johnson and stared into his eyes. “You have to mean it,” I said. “You can’t ever come back.” And in his case, ever was a long time.

  His voice wavered. “Not even to see Adrian?” Some guys really don’t ever learn.

  “Lock him up,” I said to Paul, who was about to look confused.

  “No!” Johnson knelt in midair and really accentuated his attempt at pathos, which came across more as desperation. “I’ll go. Really. Forever.”

  I looked at Paul. “How many ghosts do you have contact with in this area?” I asked.

  He had no idea. “Thousands,” he said.

  “You get it?” I said to Johnson.

  He nodded. I looked at Maxie. “Let him go. If he doesn’t leave the house immediately, you all know what to do.”

  Maxie let go of Keith Johnson’s hands, and he exited straight through the wall of the movie room toward the beach. I let out a sigh. “That’s that,” I said to myself.

  The guests applauded and stood up.

  “Best yet,” Eduardo DiSica told me as he and Vanessa walked out.

  She agreed. “I thought it was amazing. That girl on the floor really looks like she’s knocked out.”

  Oh, yeah, Cassidy. After the guests left, I asked Dad to find some rope, and we tied her up. McElone would be here in a minute, but she’d be happier if we delivered our package outside. The lieutenant doesn’t care much to come inside where the ghosts are.

  I got hugs from Mom, Melissa, and mostly Josh and warm sensations from Dad and Paul as they touched me. Maxie beckoned Everett to join her on the roof and watch to see if Johnson was really leaving and, if so, whether he was swimming to England. They rose through the ceiling.

  I was about to help Cassidy to her feet for her perp walk when I looked over at the corner of the room. There stood Madame Lorraine, facing the center of the action and looking somewhat awed. She wal
ked slowly toward me and stopped.

  “You really are a great performer,” she said. “They believed everything you said.”

  I smiled. “Some of us got it and some of us ain’t,” I told Madame Lorraine. “You know.”

  Chapter 34

  “Adrian Johnson and her two stepchildren were arrested on the Garden State Parkway near Exit 100B, maybe a half hour after you called me.” Detective Lieutenant Anita McElone and I were sitting on my front porch, which is as far as McElone will go toward my house unless absolutely necessary. “Once we had an APB out on them, the troopers didn’t need much more. They were heading north, probably to the house in Upper Saddle River and then maybe to skip out of the state.”

  “But they only made it to Asbury Park.” I was sipping a lemonade. McElone was being her usual stoic self and drinking nothing. It wasn’t that hot yet, but it was still stubbornness on her part.

  “And then they started turning on each other like a bag of snakes,” McElone said. “Everybody blamed everybody else, but it sure wasn’t their fault, that was for certain. The prosecutors will sort it out, but almost everybody’s going to jail, I would bet.”

  “I don’t get what Erika and Braden got out of this deal,” I said. “They seemed like the odd, um, couple out.”

  “Seems the Ponzi scheme old Keith was running wasn’t something he could do alone,” McElone told me. “He needed some inside help from his son the Wall Street stockbroker.”

  “And Erika?”

  McElone came very close to smiling. “She was the only one who didn’t just adore her stepmom,” she said. “She didn’t want Adrian to go to jail because that would have jeopardized Erika’s own arrangement with Keith, which included him buying her a boutique in Manhattan with the pyramid money.”

  “But she doesn’t have a boutique in Manhattan.” I thought it was important to point that out.

  “If you look deep enough, you’ll find a lease signed by Keith Johnson the day before he died. For a place that was going to be called Eriqua. I am not kidding. Once the investors had done enough of an audit after Keith died, it became a Starbucks.”

  The past night had included a quick visit from McElone and four of her best blue-uniformed friends, who had taken Cassidy Van Doren away (I was guessing this time without bail) and questioned everyone who had been in the room, yielding what I expected were somewhat confusing results. Half the group thought the whole thing was a swell show. Who was I to tell them otherwise? Evaluation forms would be filled out today, after all.

  Mom and Dad, as ever, had witnessed the mayhem without comment and then gone home, Mom driving her Dodge Viper at five miles below the speed limit the whole way. Even if Cassidy Van Doren had been menaced by someone on the road, it would not have been my mother. She’s more of an obstacle than a threat.

  Josh had gone to work this morning as usual and Melissa, first vacation day of the summer, was sleeping in. I’d already fielded a phone call from Phyllis, who wasn’t going to write an article about murders that didn’t take place in her coverage area but scolded me for not reporting back to her immediately. I grinned because that’s how you know she’s Phyllis.

  McElone had come by to get her last shot at the guests before they all went home, which they would do in a few hours when the Senior Tours Plus van would roll up to my door. They all seemed thrilled with the previous night’s festivities (as they saw it), and I’d noticed Greg Lewis and Abby Lesniak going out for a late bite at an all-night diner (as most of them are in New Jersey) some miles down the road. I’d been in bed long before they got back.

  Now with her questioning all done, McElone was taking a moment—rare for her—to discuss the case after the fact. And I could tell it was making her uncomfortable. If there’s one thing McElone can’t stand, it’s not being able to do everything herself.

  “How much ghosty stuff was involved in this?” she asked me. “You know I can’t use any of that in my report.”

  “Almost everything is on that voice recorder I gave you,” I reminded her. “There’s nothing ghost-adjacent on there, although you’ll hear breaks where I’m talking to someone who isn’t exactly there. I’d think you’d get a lot from the confessions. Has Cassidy talked yet?”

  McElone shook her head. “She lawyered up. Apparently it’s gotten to be a habit with her.”

  “Just don’t let her near this guy with any ironing instruments,” I said.

  McElone grimaced, which is as close to a smile as I’ll ever get out of her. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  She left shortly after, so I went inside to see if any of the guests needed help with packing or moving luggage. The van driver, a lovely guy with enormous arms, usually handles that, but some of the guests—usually the men—feel it’s a sign of weakness to ask someone for help.

  Melissa, now awake, was in the den pouring an iced coffee (that is, coffee from the urn over ice I’d left out in a bucket) for herself. She is infinitely more cheerful when she doesn’t have to wake up early, but her face was still telling me not to engage her in conversation just yet. I moved on.

  Nobody was in the movie room, but I found Paul and Richard in the library of all places. “Catching up on your reading?” I asked.

  Paul gave me a look much like Melissa’s, which indicated he and Richard were acting like close brothers again, and I kept walking. But it made me wonder: Was Paul planning on leaving again? Was he going somewhere with Richard? Would we have to go through that drama one more time?

  Penny Desmond was looking out through the French doors at the deck, the beach, and the ocean. A lot of guests do this on the last morning, thinking about how they’ll be back in their homes soon and away from the beauty of the shore. It’s one of the reasons I decided to come back to Harbor Haven and buy the ridiculously large Victorian that became the guesthouse.

  “Maybe you’ll come back someday,” I said to Penny when I got close enough to do so without shouting.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she answered. “I’ve never been much for the beach. Sand between your toes, having to shower off whenever you come in, salt all over from the ocean. Not for me. I like a nice little town to walk around in. You have a good one here, but I have pretty much the same thing at home without all the sand.”

  I had to ask. “Then why did you come here for vacation?”

  She looked at me as if it were obvious. “The ghosts,” she said. “They were fantastic.”

  My phone buzzed, and when I saw Tony Mandorisi’s name in the caller ID, I picked up immediately. Tony doesn’t call that often; he lets Jeannie be the social liaison. “What’s up?” I asked.

  “I’ve got a guy.”

  That was a stumper. “Does Jeannie know?” I asked.

  “Don’t be hilarious, Alison. A guy. To fix your ceiling and put in a beam.”

  “You can have all the guys you want, Tony.” I noticed Penny giving me an amused look. “But I don’t have the money to pay your guys for that big a job, and you and I know I can’t do it myself. We’ve talked about this.”

  “This guy works cheap,” Tony said. “He’s my brother.”

  And I will tell you, because I know you’ll never mention it to Tony or Jeannie, my first thought was, Oh, please, no. Not another brother.

  “How cheap?” I asked. You have to be practical.

  “We’ll talk about it, but trust me, you can afford it. I’ll call you later.”

  I gave up seeking people out for a while because that wasn’t working well for me today. I didn’t need to clean any of the guest rooms because they were still in them, but then I saw Abby and Greg walking down the stairs without luggage, looking absolutely euphoric. I hadn’t done anything to help them and that had worked like a charm.

  “You look very happy,” I told them in case they hadn’t figured that out.

  “We are,” Greg Lewis said. “I just wish I hadn’t waited so long to say something.”

  Abby patted his arm. “You have plenty of time now,
” she said.

  “What took you so long?” I asked. “Just shy?” Greg could have saved me a lot of innkeeper angst if he’d approached Abby, say, the day after they’d arrived.

  “No, not just shy. I was getting everything together so it would be perfect, and that took time. I had to write the song and record it out on the beach so I could get the sound of the surf, and I was experimenting with my own balloons before I gave up and went to that store you told me about. That worked out well.”

  Experimenting with . . . “Were you making a stretching noise in the extra guest room that night?” I asked. Greg looked guilty. “Why did you go in there? How did you go in there? The room was locked.”

  “I just needed a little private space, and my room wasn’t big enough,” he explained. “And I got in . . . well, I picked the lock. I’m a locksmith. There’s nothing in the house I couldn’t have opened if I’d wanted to.”

  That was sort of creepy. “But you didn’t, right? I mean, open any other doors.”

  Greg looked offended. “No! Of course not! Just that one time, and then I never did it again. I just needed the extra space in there.”

  I told them I was glad they’d met at my house and wished them well. The van was pulling up, and the guests were starting to drift toward the front door. I’d be needed to host them out (say good-bye) in a minute or two.

  Maxie dropped down and looked at me. “You know, Paul’s talking to Richard about leaving again,” she said.

  I’d figured that. Richard was still rocked emotionally by the revelations of the night before and would no doubt want to bolt this area as quickly as possible. And since Paul had come back only because his brother needed help, there was no reason for him to stick around either.

  “Paul’s a big boy,” I told her. “He can do what he wants to do.” As long as it was stay around my house and be my conscience. He was the Jiminy Cricket of ghosts.