Be My Ghost

by Carol J. Perry

She opened the door, approaching the closet. She turned the glass doorknob and looked inside at empty shelves except for the books at the very top. Standing on tiptoe, she pulled down one of the leather-bound volumes. Gold lettering on the cover proclaimed GUEST REGISTER. She turned to the first page, lined, and filled with handwritten names, addresses, and license plate numbers. Nothing unusual there. She made a mental note about using the registers for compiling a possible mailing list for new brochures, placed the book back on the shelf, and closed the door.

  Maybe the lawyer, despite his statements to the contrary, believed the rumor about suite twenty-seven being haunted. She smiled, locked the door behind her, and headed up the stairs to her top-floor suite. Lawrence Jackson may have had a bit of that Christmas Carol undigested beef too, she decided—the kind that produces imaginary old-time movie starlets in the mind of an overtired, wine-and-key-lime-pie–stuffed ex–ready-to-wear buyer. Thankfully, that particular figment had disappeared with the light of day.

  She was partway up the staircase when her cell phone vibrated. Caller ID said Frank Hubbard. It took a moment for Maureen to place the name. “Officer Hubbard,” she said. “Hello. Can I help you?”

  “I’m in the lobby, Ms. Doherty,” he said. “Could you come down here please?”

  “Of course. I’ll be right there.” What now? At this rate she’d never get that mess in her rooms straightened out. And what about Finn’s promised romp on the beach? The brown envelope and the legal documents still in her hands, she decided that they’d be safer in the living room desk. She hurried the rest of the way up the stairs, surprised to hear the hum of a vacuum cleaner from inside her suite. She unlocked the door.

  Gert clicked off the machine and gave a bright-red-lipped smile and opened false-eyelashed eyes wide. “Housekeeping,” she said brightly. “I’ve put away your stuff the best I could. Hope it looks okay.”

  It looked more than okay. The pair of lamps looked right at home on the tables at each end of the blue couch. A crystal vase an old flame had given Maureen, now centered on the coffee table, held a bouquet of wild flowers, mostly daisies.

  “I put the suitcases in the bedroom and hung up the clothes that were on your bed,” Gert continued. “Your dog is hiding under the bed, by the way. I think he’s afraid of the vacuum cleaner.”

  “It looks wonderful, Gert.” Maureen hurried across the room and deposited the envelope and papers in the top drawer of the desk. She smiled, noticing the desk set. There was a brass plaque with her name on it right next to a mounted pen set and a matching clock, which had once graced her desk at Bartlett’s. “There’s someone waiting for me downstairs or I’d thank you properly for all this. I’ll catch up with you later.”

  “No problem,” Gert insisted. “I love cleaning these rooms. Never know who you’re going to meet up here.” She gave a broad, heavily mascaraed wink. “If you know what I mean.”

  Maureen didn’t know what she meant but didn’t have time to discuss it. “Catch up with you later,” she said again, and raced away toward the elevator.

  Frank Hubbard stood next to the reception desk facing Elizabeth. They each turned when Maureen approached, neither one smiling.

  “What’s wrong?” Maureen asked. Obviously, something was. “What’s going on, Officer?”

  “I need to get back to the kitchen.” Elizabeth disappeared into the dining room.

  Officer Hubbard moved closer to Maureen, speaking quietly. “We have a problem. The coroner’s report is—um—disturbing. Is there somewhere we could talk privately?”

  “My office,” she said. “It’s on the second floor.” She led the way to the elevator. Once inside, as the cage made its way between floors, again she asked, “What’s going on?”

  “It appears,” Hubbard said, “that Conrad Wilson died of poisoning. The question now is was it self-inflicted?” He looked around, as though he thought someone might be listening. “Or not?” The two stepped out of the elevator. Hubbard followed Maureen to the suite at the end of the hall. For the third time that day she unlocked the door to suite twenty-seven.

  “Come in,” she said.

  He hesitated at the threshold, reading the STAFF ONLY designation on the door. “Isn’t this the—um—isn’t this suite twenty-seven?”

  “Oh for goodness’ sake, yes. It’s suite twenty-seven.” She couldn’t disguise the note of impatience in her voice. “It’s also my office. Please come in.”

  Hubbard nodded, following her direction, and sat in one of the striped chairs. “I’ll keep the investigation as unobtrusive as I can,” he said. “We’ll make every effort to disrupt your business here as little as possible. But we’ll be interviewing staff and possibly some guests. We may have to rope off certain areas temporarily, search some parts of the inn.”

  “Oh dear,” Maureen said. “This is not good news.” She thought of Larry Jackson’s offer of a variety of legal services. What if the inn, already in financial trouble, was somehow responsible for Wilson’s death? “It wasn’t some sort of food poisoning, was it? I mean, did something he ate or drank here cause his death?”

  “It was a large amount of a fairly common heart medication. We’re not sure how it was administered. We’ve talked with Wilson’s agent—you knew he did both TV and magazines and was working on a book?”

  “I knew he was a magazine writer. I’d heard about the ghost TV shows.” Maureen thought of the copy of Got Ghosts? she’d bought at the bookstore and hadn’t yet read. “Did he have a heart problem?”

  “According to the agent, Wilson was in excellent health.”

  “Then you believe something happened here at the inn that caused his death?”

  “According to the coroner, the amount of medication in his system caused his death in a relatively short time.”

  “He looked fine when everyone saw him in the dining room. It had to be after that,” Maureen said.

  “How long after you saw him at the bar did you discover the body?” Hubbard leaned forward in the striped chair.

  “It couldn’t have been much more than an hour.”

  “What did you do after you found Mr. Wilson? Did you touch the body? Attempt to resuscitate?”

  “Í touched his wrist. Felt for a pulse. Then I went inside to get help.”

  “You told Elizabeth what had happened.” He leaned back in the chair, shifted his position, looked toward the closed room, then sat upright again.

  “Yes.”

  “Were you aware that Mr. Wilson, in his line of work, always carried a camera and took many photographs around this property? Your property. Did you have any objection to that?”

  “I wasn’t aware of it,” she said. “Others have told me about it.”

  “Did you have any objection to it?” he asked again.

  Maureen struggled to keep her voice level. “I didn’t give it any thought, one way or another.”

  “When you observed Mr. Wilson at the bar, did he have his camera with him?”

  Maureen thought about the moment she’d seen Wilson, with the purple drink. The sparkler and the applause. “I didn’t notice,” she said. “There was a lot going on.”

  “Apparently Wilson always had the camera with him,” Hubbard said.

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “When you found the body on the floor, did you see a camera?”

  “He wasn’t on the floor,” Maureen corrected. “He was sitting in the rocking chair. He looked as though he was asleep.”

  “How did he happen to wind up on the floor?”

  “My dog pushed the chair. He—he—slipped out of it.” She remembered the man’s open eyes.

  “Was he holding a camera?” Hubbard asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Maureen said, thinking back. “No, I’m quite sure he wasn’t.”

  “Ms. Doherty.” Hubbard leaned forward in the chair again. “Do you feel that publicity—perhaps on a national television show—about ghosts in the Haven House Inn would be detrimental to your business h
ere?”

  “I just got here a day ago, Officer Hubbard. I don’t know anything about running an inn. I don’t know what’s good for business or what isn’t. But I do know that I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  He turned partway around in the chair, so that he faced the coffee table. He pointed. “But you like to read about them?”

  She followed the direction of his finger. The magazines on the table were fanned out so that the titles were visible. Current issues of Department Store Journal, Retail News, and Dog World she’d brought with her from Saugus. The Carolinas Magazine she’d picked up at South of the Border. At the bottom of the pile was the still-unread issue of Got Ghosts?

  “Oh, that. I bought it from Aster at the bookstore. I haven’t even opened it.” She knew it sounded lame the minute she said it.

  “Uh-huh,” he said, making the fingers on both hands into a steeple shape and peering at her over the fingertips. “Uh-huh.”

  “Listen,” she said. “I have a lot to do today.” She stood. “So, if you don’t mind . . .”

  “Of course.” He stood. “I just wanted you to know that we’d be around the premises for a while, conducting our investigation. We’ll try not to upset the operation of your business too much. Thanks for your cooperation, Ms. Doherty. We’ll be in touch.”

  Chapter 12

  Maureen closed the door firmly behind the departing policeman, then stood quietly, alone in her handsome new office, for a long moment. When it seemed as though enough time had passed for Hubbard to have reached the elevator, she opened the door a crack and peeked out. The corridor was clear.

  A torrent of thoughts bombarded her senses. The interview—if that’s what it was—had been more than unsettling. The apparent fact that the man had been poisoned was shocking enough. The realization that an actual police investigation was underway in the inn—her inn—was somehow terrifying. Worst of all, except for Finn, she had no support system in place here. No parents, no helpful co-workers, not even a friendly landlady. She was alone.

  Her mother’s often-repeated words came to her: Maybe you’ll meet someone—a nice man. She almost laughed aloud at that. So far—other than Sam and George—she’d met a lawyer who wanted her to sell the place and thought she might need a personal injury attorney, a cop with a thing about ghosts, and a good-looking bartender who liked cats. She had, of course, during her almost-thirty-six years, met a number of “nice men”—but never the right one.

  She ventured into the corridor and took the stairs down to the dining room, hoping that there was still some of that butternut squash soup left. Maybe some food would help to calm her nerves, to get her thoughts organized.

  It was well past noon when Maureen sat at one of the round tables. The lunchtime crowd—if in fact there had been a crowd—was gone and only a few of the other tables were occupied. She recognized the couple Elizabeth had dubbed “the autograph hunters” at one of them and the Flannagans at another but didn’t feel one bit like socializing. She looked around the big, almost-empty room, searching for the ubiquitous Herbie. Instead, she caught the eye of a young waitress whose name tag identified her as Shelly.

  “Good afternoon, Ms. Doherty.” The girl handed her a menu. “Our lunch special today is homemade butternut squash soup and a grilled cheese sandwich.”

  Comfort food, Maureen thought. Perfect. Ordering the special and a glass of raspberry iced tea, she began to relax, to organize scattered thoughts. First things first, she told herself. I need to take a good long look at the figures Jackson gave me. If I’m going to make a go of this place, poisoned ghost hunter or not, I’ll need a plan. Planning is something I know how to do. The Haven House Inn has potential. I’m sure of it. She glanced around the room again, noting the many empty tables. But just in case, I’ll take a peek inside that brown envelope full of offers too.

  By the time she’d eaten half of the absolutely amazing soup and a quarter of the perfectly browned and richly cheesy sandwich, she’d visualized a new brochure, mentally painted all of the porch rocking chairs in vivid primary colors, swapped off about half of the wicker furniture for some repro Danish modern, ordered some light-colored draperies to replace the dark fern-patterned ones in the dining room, and doodled a design on the back of a paper napkin for new uniforms for the waitstaff.

  After she’d finished her lunch, Maureen decided that alone wasn’t such a bad place to be after all. She felt competent. Even happy. She looked toward the bar, thinking she’d stop by to compliment Ted on the soup and to inquire once more about Bogie and Bacall.

  There were no customers seated on the barstools and the red-vested man behind the counter had his back to the room. She glanced down at her rough sketch on the napkin. The vests would have to go. Maybe Ted would have some suggestions about new uniforms. She tucked the napkin into her purse and leaving a nice tip for Shelly she started across the room. The bartender turned as she approached.

  It wasn’t Ted.

  Maureen stopped, flustered. “Excuse me,” she said. “Hello there. I’m Maureen Doherty, the new owner of the inn. I thought you were Ted.”

  “I wish,” he said with a bright smile. “Ted’s the main man around here. I’m Leo. Sometimes if things get busy, I’m Ted’s barback Course, things don’t get busy that much here anymore. Elizabeth called me in at the last minute. Ted got called away for something. Can I get you a drink, Ms. Doherty?”

  “Just a Diet Coke,” she said. “Is Ted okay? I wanted to compliment him on the soup.”

  “Yeah. Everybody said it was great. Haven’t tasted it myself.” He dropped his voice. “Actually, Ted’s out in the kitchen. Some cops are back there going over the bar inventory and he’s the expert on that stuff. Something to do with the dead guy, I suppose. But I guess you know all about that.”

  “You probably know as much about it as I do,” she said. “I guess the police have to do their work. I hope things will be back to normal around here soon.” She sipped her drink, wondering what “normal” might actually be like at the Haven House Inn. She turned partway around on the barstool. The Flannagans had left, but the autograph hunters were still there. They’d caught on to the casual dress code—he in jeans and Hawaiian print, she in shorts and a Guy Harvey T-shirt The gold bag had been replaced with an equally large, but less flamboyant, sailcloth one

  They’re paying guests, Maureen thought. It’s about time I introduced myself and welcomed them. She left a few bills on the bar, wished Leo a good day, and approached the table where the two appeared to be in conversation.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “I’m Maureen Doherty, the new owner of Haven House. I wanted to welcome you. I hope you’re enjoying your stay with us.”

  The man stood, extending his hand. “Won’t you join us, Ms. Doherty? I’m Alex Morgan. This is my wife, Clarissa.”

  “Thank you.” Maureen shook his hand, nodded to the woman, and sat in a straight-backed varnished oak chair. “I’m so happy to meet you both. Are you enjoying your vacation?”

  “We’re on what you might call a ‘working vacation,’ ” Alex Morgan said. “We’re here on assignment.”

  “All the way from New York,” Clarissa said. She didn’t look happy.

  “I hope you’re enjoying our lovely beach,” Maureen said. “My dog and I took a nice walk down by the water this morning and picked up some interesting seashells.”

  “We’ve been meaning to do that. Just haven’t got around to it yet,” the man said.

  “We’ve been busy taking pictures—making notes.” The woman frowned. “We’re writers.”

  Maureen breathed a silent prayer that they weren’t travel writers, sure that the Haven House Inn, at that moment, would barely rate even one star. “Oh?” she said. “Writers?”

  “That’s right.” The man reached into his shirt pocket and produced a business card. He handed it to Maureen. CLARISSA AND ALEX MORGAN, it read. GHOST INVESTIGATIONS, INC. There was a New York City address and telephone number.

  “You’r
e ghost hunters?” The question had slipped out. She quickly rephrased, “I mean, you’re here to see if the rumors about the inn being haunted have any foundation in fact?”

  “Exactly,” he said. “We’ve tried not to be obtrusive about it. We’re not like that phony showboat Conrad Wilson.”

  The woman reached over and patted his hand. “Now darling, let’s not speak ill of the dead—even if he was a no-talent hack.”

  Maureen searched for words. “I’m sorry. I thought you were fans. Elizabeth said you wanted his autograph.”

  Clarissa laughed. “Elizabeth? Is that her name? She tried to stop us, but we were too fast for her. We sent him a drink, walked right up to the bar, handed him the magazine and a pen, and he signed it, no problem. Want to see it?” She reached into the commodious bag and produced a copy of Got Ghosts?—the same issue Maureen had bought at the bookstore.

  “Yes, well, I—um . . .” Maureen stood, searching for words. “I need to get back to work. I hope you’ll enjoy the rest of your stay with us. If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”

  “So, is it?” Clarissa asked, her expression brightening.

  “Is it what?” Maureen tucked the business card into her purse.

  “Haunted,” Alex said. “And we all know the answer to that one, don’t we?” He laughed a short little laugh. “Oh boy, is it ever! Right, Ms. Doherty?”

  Clarissa giggled. “Don’t worry, honey, when our book comes out every ghost junkie in the world will want to stay here.”

  Maureen was tempted to repeat the words she’d spoken so many times recently. But she didn’t say, “I don’t believe in ghosts.” She stood, fake-smiled, said, “Nice to meet you,” and fast-walked toward the exit.

  Another message from a stranger

  Holds an answer, comes with danger.

  Chapter 13

  Maureen skipped the stairway in favor of the elevator and rode all the way up to her “penthouse,” as she was beginning to think of the suite. The privacy involved in being the only person on the third floor was attractive. She heard Finn’s welcoming “woof” as soon as she left the elevator and hurried down the corridor to unlock the door. Finn did his usual tail-wagging happy excitement performance.