An Open Spook (A Haunted Guesthouse Mystery) (6 page)

“I think it might be time to go wake Mac,” Paul said, “because I think you might be right, Loretta.”

“I’ll go,” Alison said and stood.

“Hold on,” Paul told her. “We need to coordinate our plan.”

“Our plan?” Alison asked. “We have a plan?”

Paul didn’t acknowledge her humor. “I think you need an excuse to ask Mac to come out,” he told Alison. “Something that’s not about the bracelet.”

“Tell him you’re making lunch,” I suggested.

“That’s not bad,” Paul continued. “He can’t go out for food in the storm; nothing will be open.”

“Mom?” Alison said. She knew we had no lunch prepared.

“I’m on it, honey,” I said. I went to the fridge, taking a mental inventory of its contents as I went. I took out the challah bread, some sliced turkey and the leftover chicken from the night before, along with some lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise. I’d brought everything but the mayo in my backpack yesterday. “We’ll have chicken or turkey sandwiches. I hope Mac isn’t a vegetarian, but I can work something out for him if he is.”

As Alison left the kitchen to get Mac and I started preparing plates with all the different ingredients so we could assemble our sandwiches personally, Sergeant Elliot appeared in the kitchen doorway with a sheepish expression on his face.

Paul looked up at Robert with a quizzical expression. “Sergeant?”

“I . . . regret leaving so abruptly before,” the new ghost said. “I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely honest with you. That was a mistake.”

“You weren’t really searching for the bracelet, were you, Sergeant?” Paul asked. “You
knew
Mac had it, and you were trying to get it away from him.”

“I need it,” Sergeant Elliot answered. “What I told you about it was true.”

“You want to evolve, to move on to the next level of existence,” Paul agreed, “but you need that one bracelet. Is it the last one?”

The sergeant nodded. “The last one still being worn. And that crazy hippie won’t let it go.”

On cue, Alison ushered Mac into the kitchen as I started to put the food out on the island, where Melissa had been busy setting four places.

“Come in, Mac,” I said. “We’ve got some sandwiches for you, if you’re hungry.”

“Thank you,” said Alison’s guest. He was dressed in a long-sleeved T-shirt with a peace sign over a tie-dyed pattern and had changed his headband to one in a khaki camouflage pattern. I noticed that Sergeant Elliot’s lip curled into a small sneer.

“Look at him,” he said, pointing to Mac. “He wears my name on his arm like another souvenir. Me and Janis Joplin are the same to him. He doesn’t begin to understand loyalty, responsibility,
respect
. He thinks we went to Vietnam because we wanted to kill people, and now he treats us like a black light poster or a set of love beads.”

At that moment, I began seeing a way to help. But I wasn’t sure if I should try yet. Paul seemed to have a plan. I decided to let him try and see what happened.

“How long have you been trying to get that bracelet from Mac’s wrist?” Paul asked the sergeant.

“Over a year,” was the response. “First, I spent years tracking down a lot of the others. Most of them the people just took off eventually, and I didn’t have to worry about them. They ended up being sent back, thrown away, put in a drawer or forgotten. Their bond to me is broken and can’t hold me back. But the ones that were left—there were only six—were easy enough to get. One person left it behind when he went to the beach, so I grabbed it. Another took it off for bed. Easy. I got the first five in about two years, including the time it took to travel from spot to spot—you can feel when there’s one nearby. But
this
one.” He pointed toward Mac. “I’ve been with him every minute of every day for fourteen months, and he
never takes it off
.” He looked at me. “Yes. That’s why I was trying to get the bracelet off with some of the chicken grease.”

I sniffed. My chicken is
not
greasy. But I couldn’t say anything.

“If the little creep had put that determination to work in the army, instead of protesting and complaining back home, he might have made a decent soldier,” the sergeant added.

Alison’s eyebrow twitched. She’s very protective of her guests.

We sat down and started passing plates of food to go with the challah, and sandwiches were being assembled. I think everyone in the room except Mac was focusing on his left wrist, where the POW bracelet bearing Sergeant Elliot’s name glinted.

“Was that why you asked your ex-fiancée to help you get it?” Paul asked.

The sergeant looked more flustered. “You know about Barbara?” he gasped.

Maxine seemed especially pleased with herself when she said, “Barbara Ann Litton was born in 1948. She graduated high school in Madison, Wisconsin, just like you, and moved here to New Jersey when you were transferred to Fort Dix. You shipped out to Vietnam, and she stayed here even after you were declared missing. She waited six years, then met and married . . .”

“We get it, Maxie,” Paul said. “Very good research.” He turned toward Sergeant Elliot as Alison, Melissa and Mac discussed the severity of the storm and I listened. (Mac said the wind was “mind-blowing,” and I don’t think he was being ironic.) “You started searching for the bracelets at about the same time Ms. Litton passed away. You must have found her fairly quickly. Why were you so eager to find the other bracelets?”

Sergeant Elliot looked uncomfortable and cast his gaze toward the floor. “You know how it is—some people come back as ghosts, some don’t. When Barbara died, we found each other again, and wanted to spend as much time as possible together. But she was going to move on; she could tell. And it was going to happen fast. She’s been holding it off by sheer willpower until she knew I could go with her. I needed to get those bracelets so I could go on.”

Paul’s expression indicated he had deduced most of that already. “So it was Ms. Litton at work when Mac ended up falling out of his bed. She’s been trying to help you get the bracelets, and she was trying to get that one off Mac.”

“We both were,” the sergeant admitted. “He’s got it on so tight, it’s a miracle he hasn’t cut off circulation to his hand.” He looked at Paul. “You’ve got to get him to take it off.
Please
.”

I looked up at Paul then, almost involuntarily. I thought it might be time to give my idea a whirl, and I think Paul understood that from my expression, even if he didn’t know what I was considering. But Mac was listening, so I wrote my idea briefly on the bag from which I’d taken the bread and maneuvered it so Paul could see it. He read it and turned toward the sergeant.

“Why don’t you invite Barbara to join us?” he said. “Now that we know she’s here, there’s no harm.”

Sergeant Elliot appeared to consider that for moment, and then, apparently lacking Paul’s ability to communicate telepathically, looked toward the ceiling and yelled, “BARBARA! It’s okay!”

I decided, having heard Sergeant Elliot’s point of view, to find out what Mac’s might be. “You know, Mac, I have a POW bracelet, too,” I said, extending my arm with Colonel Mason’s name imprinted on the metal hanging from my wrist.

Mac extended his arm involuntarily at the mention of the bracelet. Paul must have thought that was my intention—I hadn’t even thought of it, to tell the truth—and pointed it out to Sergeant Elliot. The sergeant floated down toward Mac.

“I did notice that, man,” Mac said. I ignored the fact that he’d gotten my gender wrong. People like him often call everyone “man.” “You never found out what happened to your soldier, either?”

That was the opening I’d been waiting for, but I wanted to hold my response until Barbara Litton, who had tentatively emerged through the kitchen ceiling face-first—to see if it was safe, no doubt—was able to hear what was going on. She made her way to Sergeant Elliot, who had surreptitiously picked up a fork from the counter and seemed to be trying to determine how to hook it on Mac’s bracelet without showing himself. Whether or not he was worried about injuring Mac was hard to determine. Melissa was watching with fascination. Alison looked to me.

“No, I haven’t,” I said. “But I’ll admit, I take the bracelet off once in a while. Don’t you find that it starts to feel heavy on your arm? That it’s uncomfortable when you’re swimming or showering?” I took it off to show him, hoping he might do the same, but he didn’t.

“Yes, it does get to be a real drag to wear it sometimes,” Mac agreed.

Sergeant Elliot gestured to Alison to try and take Mac’s hand, to raise it off the island so he and Barbara could get a better angle with the fork. Alison, probably concerned for Mac’s arm, ignored him.

“Then why not take it off?” Melissa asked. She’d picked up on part of what I was trying to do; that girl is so quick.

“Can’t,” Mac answered her gently. “That would be disrespectful to Sergeant Elliot.”

Sergeant Elliot and Barbara stopped in midair, literally.

“What did he say?” he sergeant asked.

“Respect,” Barbara whispered. She seemed very uneasy among other people, particularly living ones, and rose a little toward the ceiling again, perhaps considering escape if necessary.

“Disrespectful?” I echoed to Mac. “Didn’t you oppose the war?”

“Of course,” Alison’s guest answered. “But not the people who were fighting it. It’s not like they went because they wanted to hurt people. I’ll bet Sergeant Elliot didn’t even know where Vietnam was before the war started.”

“It’s true,” the sergeant said. He hovered, barely moving, directly to Mac’s left, and turned toward Paul. “You knew he thought like this?”

Paul gave a small nod. “I gathered when Mac knew just what date and in what province you had died that it had been especially important to him. That’s information that isn’t on the bracelet—both his and Loretta’s show just a name and a date. He would have had to do quite a bit of research on the name he saw there, long before there was an Internet to make things easy.”

Maxine scoffed. “You call that easy?”

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” I told Mac. “You must really feel a connection to Sergeant Elliot.”

Mac tilted his head in agreement. “The more I researched him, the more impressive he became,” he said. “From what I can tell, he was a good man and a fine leader of men. He was never found; his remains, if he’s dead, were never brought home. I can’t disgrace his memory by taking this off.” He gestured with the bracelet.

Like I said, I’m not ashamed of my gift, but I don’t often volunteer the information. I know Alison doesn’t care to broadcast her abilities, and especially not Melissa’s. But this time, I thought directness was the best solution to the problem. I looked up at Paul, who nodded his agreement. “Go for it,” he said.

“Mac, I have something to tell you that must remain a secret between us,” I said. Alison’s brow knitted and Melissa looked at me with a mixture of concern and wonder, no doubt puzzling over what her grandmother must be plotting now. I took a breath. “I can see ghosts.”

Alison grunted. Melissa suppressed a smile. Maxine, watching near Barbara, possibly in an attempt to keep her from fleeing, said, “Uh-oh.”

But Mac seemed unfazed. “Far out,” he said in a normal tone of voice. “What’s that like?”

“It’s a great gift and I cherish it,” I told him honestly. “But I’m wondering what you’d think if I said it might be a greater sign of respect to Sergeant Elliot if you were to take the bracelet off.”

“Very good,” Paul said. “I couldn’t have done it better myself.”

“Do you think he’ll go for that?” Sergeant Elliot said quietly.

Barbara Litton, suddenly, looked focused and interested. “Watch him,” she told the sergeant. “I think he means it.”

“Means what?” Maxine asked, but no one answered.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Mac told me. His right hand went to cover the bracelet in a protective gesture. “I’m keeping his memory alive. Taking if off would be a betrayal. With all due respect, I think I know Sergeant Elliot a little better than you do, Loretta. Can you understand that?”

“Certainly I can,” I answered. “But I’m asking you to trust me on this.”

“Man, I get where you’re coming from, I do,” he said. “But you’re not getting me. A lot of people took their bracelets off. You did, too, and that’s cool. But I think I’m entitled to my point of view, and I think the sergeant wouldn’t want me to forget him. Why should I take off mine?”

It was time, as Jack once told me when he was trying to teach me to play poker, to go all in. “Because Sergeant Elliot is right there and he wants you to,” I said, pointing to the sergeant himself, a foot to Mac’s left.

Probably without thinking, Mac looked where I had pointed, though of course he saw no one. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“Very.”

“How do you know that’s what he wants?” Mac seemed suspicious, though that was certainly understandable.

“Because that’s what he told me,” I said, although technically the sergeant had been speaking to Paul. “He says that he needs you to take off the bracelet so he can move on to the next plane of existence.”

“Wild,” Mac responded.

Encouraged by his apparent interest, I continued. “You see, in the afterlife, Sergeant Elliot has reconnected with the one woman he loved before he went to Vietnam, and she’s moving on. The sergeant wants to go with her, and time is running out.”

Barbara Litton bit her lower lip. Mac looked at the hand he’d placed over his bracelet, just like Sergeant Elliot put his hand over Barbara’s.

“How do I know you’re right?” he asked. “How do I know the sergeant is actually here?”

“This little hippie is questioning me?” Sergeant Elliot asked. He looked at Alison. “Can I borrow a meat cleaver? I’ll show him I’m here!”

Alison shook her head with some urgency.

“Why not just take it off for a day or two?” Melissa suggested. “We can tell you when the sergeant moves on, and you could put it back if you want.”

“That’s not a bad idea—” Alison’s guest began. “Wait a minute. You can see the ghost, too, Melissa?”

Melissa looked at Alison, suddenly concerned that she might have done something wrong. Alison gave her a little smile and mouthed, “Okay.”