An Open Spook (A Haunted Guesthouse Mystery) (7 page)

“Yes, I can,” Melissa told Mac.

“I don’t like the way this is going,” Sergeant Elliot said.

“The sergeant and his fiancée, Barbara, are both here, and they both hope you’ll take off the bracelet. Just for a little bit,” Alison said.

This seemed to be moving a little too fast for Mac. “You, too?” he asked Alison. Before she could acknowledge her ability, he put his hands up defensively and stood. “I’m sorry. I can believe in a lot of things—trust me—but all three of you seeing ghosts? That’s too much.” He took a step toward the door. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop him!” Sergeant Elliot shouted. “We’ve got to get that bracelet!”

“Mac,” I started.

But his gaze was clearly fixed elsewhere. Like in midair, a few feet in front of him, directly at his eye level. It was as if he had been hypnotized. He stared.

He had good reason to do so. Two roast chicken legs were, to his eyes, performing a very vivid cancan directly in front of him. This continued, Mac’s eyes almost rotating as he watched the motion, for almost a full minute before the legs did a final leap into the air and landed, in a split, on an imaginary stage somewhere three feet off the floor.

Barbara Litton held the legs there for a few moments, then brought them back up where each did a “bow,” and then she made them “walk” back to the island and lie back down on the platter from which she’d snatched them. Mac watched them all the way back, mouth agape.

Then, smiling, he walked to the counter and took off the bracelet, which he placed on the center island. He said nothing else as he picked up the plate holding what was left of his sandwich and walked out of the room.

Sergeant Elliot looked at his former—and for all I knew, current—fiancée with awe. He moved to her side and embraced her, and then something seemed to startle them; their whole bodies twitched.

“Is this it?” the sergeant asked Barbara.

She shrugged. “How would I know?”

They started to rise to the ceiling. Barbara looked down at me directly and said, “We don’t have much time. Thank you.” She seemed to evaporate.

Sergeant Elliot vanished in the same moment. But as he left, I could hear his voice saying, “I’m eternally grateful.” And they were gone.

The group of us, living and not, looked up into the ceiling. Alison’s eyes and Melissa’s were a little damp, and if I were to be subjected to a polygraph test, it might prove that mine were as well.

Paul and Maxine stared for a while, then looked at each other. Their expressions were full of wonder but something else—envy?—might have mixed in. Suddenly, they were all looking at me.

“That was amazing,” Alison said.

“I’m just relieved nobody in our family prefers the dark meat,” I said.

Mac stayed for two more days, talking with us about our abilities and promising not to spread the word of his experiences, before it was safe for him to drive home. After one day, Melissa suggested he could put the bracelet back on, but he chose to go without it, saying he didn’t “want to mess with the karma.”

I went back home the same day he did, and I was relieved to see that there was no damage to the interior of my town house and that the exterior damage was minimal. Jack, of course, was unharmed but relieved I was home safe. The power stayed off for six days. I drove back to Alison’s a day later, after she called to say her power had returned as well. Melissa still wasn’t back in school, as the basement and lower floor of her school building had been seriously flooded. Life was coming back to the area, but slowly.

We cleared most of the downed branches from her front yard, and Alison asked Murray Feldner, a man she’s known since grade school who made his living as a tow truck driver and snow removal service, to bring a chain saw when he could to cut up the huge branch in the back of her property.

There had also been a great number of roof tiles blown off, so Alison was piling them up in the front yard when I arrived. I started to pitch in, but the bulk of the work had already been done.

The scene between Sergeant Elliot and Mac was still lingering in my mind. “Imagine,” I said after a while. “Mac thought he was honoring Sergeant Elliot, and instead he was holding him back. You just never know the effect you’re having on other people.”

“
I
do,” Maxine said.

“Really,” Alison responded.

Paul and Maxine were not helping stack the tiles—passersby would see tiles stacking themselves, and Alison was already known in parts of town as the “ghost lady”—but they were watching Melissa, Alison and me stack them.

Alison looked at me and sighed. “These are a lot of shingles,” she said, pointing to the intimidating pile. “I’m going to have to go up on the roof and replace them.”

The Victorian is a very tall house, and reflexively I looked up. “That seems dangerous,” I said.

“Gotta get done.”

“You could ask Tony,” I said of her contractor friend.

“Tony’s doing repairs on his own house, and then has about seventeen jobs lined up. That’s why I had to ask Murray for the chain saw; Tony’s just too backed up to come. Who knows how long it’ll take to rebuild everything? My roof is the least of anybody’s problems around here. Once the stores are all restocked, I’m going to get some shingles and get up there.” She didn’t look happy about it, and I didn’t blame her.

“Grandma, you’re not wearing your POW bracelet,” Melissa said. “Did you just leave it home today?”

“No. I’ve decided not to wear it anymore. I don’t want to strand Colonel Mason the way the sergeant was stranded.”

“Well, you have the advantage of being able to see Colonel Mason if he comes to ask,” Alison pointed out.

“Yes, but suppose he can’t.” I replied. “Suppose he never made it home from Vietnam, and he’s stuck there. I don’t want to take that chance. I think the best way to honor him is to allow him peace.”

“You’re very conscientious,” Alison said.

“What’s ‘conscientious’?” Melissa asked.

“Like Grandma.” Alison glanced up at the roof again and looked worried.

I thought about that when I went home that night. Alison told me a few days later that she’d bought the shingles and was planning on climbing up to the roof the next day to begin installing them.

But when she woke up the next day, the roof had been completely repaired.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” I asked Jack now, on our way to Alison’s house for dinner with the girls, the ghosts and Josh Kaplan.

“Of course it was me; you knew it was me,” he said, “sitting” in the passenger seat. I’d had to talk Jack out of putting on his seatbelt, pointing out that there was little harm that could befall him these days. “I wasn’t going to let her climb up there and break her neck.”

“You’re a good dad.”

“Better now than then,” he said.

“Don’t sell yourself short,” I told my deceased husband. “Your heart was in the right place.”

“Technically, my heart is in an urn somewhere, isn’t it?”

I didn’t answer that.

• • •

“You’re still wearing that?” Marilyn Beechman asked. She pointed to the POW bracelet on my left wrist. It was some the worse for wear after four years, but not rusted or dirty. I glanced at it.

We were at her apartment in Matawan, where she’d just moved to be with her boyfriend (later husband, later ex-husband), Roy, and Marilyn was cooking dinner just to prove to me that she could. Chicken Parm. She was sautéing the chicken in preparation for the oven as we spoke.

“You told me I had to wear it until Colonel Mason was found or declared dead,” I said. “I haven’t seen anything that said he was either.”

Since I’d gotten to the apartment and Roy had taken my coat—and then disappeared into the bedroom, saying he wanted to let us have our “girl talk,” a sure sign that he’d eventually be Marilyn’s ex-husband—there had been an incessant banging coming from somewhere in the place, but Marilyn was not acknowledging it.

“They’ve found pretty much everybody,” she answered. “There’s no reason to think he wasn’t among them.”

“I wrote away to the Department of Defense and never got an answer,” I said. The pounding wouldn’t stop. “What is that noise, anyway?”

“Oh, sorry,” Marilyn told me. “The super sent up some guy to fix the ceiling in the bathroom, and he’s been hammering all day. It’s making me crazy, but he’ll leave soon. They shut down at six. You really wrote to the Department of Defense?” Marilyn repeated with a chuckle. “You’re so naïve. They’re never going to tell you the truth. Hasn’t this Watergate thing taught you anything about trusting the government?”

“Well, maybe I should take the bracelet off for good, then,” I said.

“Don’t do that,” said a voice from behind me.

Holding a step stool, a young man in painter’s overalls and a canvas cap was walking out of the bathroom. He looked at Marilyn. “Ceiling’s just about fixed,” he said. “I’ll come back tomorrow to compound and sand it, okay?”

“Sure,” she said, stirring jar marinara sauce in a pot and not looking up.

“Why shouldn’t I take it off?” I asked the super’s assistant. He had a small frame but solid muscles, sort of like John Garfield.

“Because it’s a way of letting the guys who fought know that you understand what they went through, and you want all their buddies to get home safe, even the ones who are still being held prisoner.”

“Vietnam was a mistake,” Marilyn said.

The young man shrugged. “Governments make mistakes. Should we punish the poor guys who had to carry them out? Some friends of mine were there. Some didn’t come back. I don’t care about the politics. I care about my friends. I say you should keep wearing the bracelet, ma’am.”

“Ma’am?” I said.

“Miss?” he asked and smiled.

I decided right then I would keep wearing the bracelet for a while.

And I married the young handyman the following year.

Lieutenant Colonel William Henderson Mason was born October 12, 1924, and was lost in Laos on May 22, 1968. His crew included Captain Thomas B. Mitchell, Captain William T. McPhail, Seaman Apprentice Gary Pate, Staff Sergeant Calvin C. Glover, Aircraft Mechanics Melvin D. Rash and John Q. Adam.

The crew departed Ubon carrying passenger Major Jerry L. Chambers. Radio contact was lost and the aircraft did not return to base. There was no further contact. Because Laos did not participate in the Paris Peace Accords, no American held in Laos has ever been released.

Colonel Mason was a 1946 graduate of West Point and was promoted to full colonel while classified as missing.

A group remains burial for the crew, including Colonel Mason, was held on June 10, 2010.

Source: POW Network, 2010, www.pownetwork.org/bios/m/m019.

Photo by E. J. Copperman, taken on the kitchen table, May 2013.

Keep reading for a special excerpt from E. J. Copperman’s next Haunted Guesthouse Mystery . . .

THE THRILL OF THE HAUNT

Available in paperback November 2013 from Berkley Prime Crime!

“Are you the ghost lady?”

I’ve heard the question many times, but I’m not crazy about it, frankly. Living in a large Victorian with my eleven-year-old daughter and two dead people who never took the hint—while trying to make a go of the place as a guesthouse—is difficult enough. But since Harbor Haven, New Jersey, is a small shore town, and everybody knows all about everybody else, the question does come up.

Usually, to be honest, I try to summon up an icy stare that makes the asker back down, but in this case, I did my best to force a small, knowing smile and nod. You had to be nice to Everett.

Everett, as far as I knew, was the only homeless man in Harbor Haven. He was in his mid-fifties now and never bothered anybody. It was rumored that he was a veteran of one war or another, and post-military life had clearly not been kind to him. Even on this fine spring day, he was bundled up with clothing because he couldn’t afford to jettison anything that he wouldn’t be able to replace before winter.

Everett was an oddly beloved figure around town. In a community that liked to flaunt its concern for its own, Everett gave everyone an opportunity to show how understanding we could be; we out-kinded each other when dealing with him. There was a great deal of hypocrisy, of course, as no one really ever tried to know him or tried to help in any substantial way, but that was almost beside the point.

Everett had taken up residence, more or less, outside Stud Muffin, our local pastry shop, which showed a good deal of intelligence on his part. People grabbing a quick snack or a coffee would provide him with spare change, and Jenny Webb, owner of the establishment, might occasionally sneak him a day-old product or two. Even now, with the Stud Muffin still a little shabbier than usual, since what we call “the storm” and the media calls Hurricane Sandy, it wasn’t unusual to see Everett in his Mount Vesuvius of clothing, with shoe soles worn through, eating a raspberry-filled croissant on any given morning.

I’d just been leaving the shop with my best friend, Jeannie, when Everett had stopped me with his question. Jeannie had recently returned to work at Accurate Insurance (although why accuracy is the first quality one would look for in an insurance company eludes me) after maternity leave, and her son Oliver was now spending time with a nanny named Louise, whom Jeannie had hired after an exhaustive search that made the vetting process of a Supreme Court justice seem like answering an ad on Craigslist. Jeannie is, let’s say, a hands-on kind of mom.

“I guess so,” I told him. I gave Jeannie a glance and reached into my overstuffed tote bag for my wallet, then took out a five dollar bill to give to Everett. Jeannie did the same.

But Everett held up a hand like Diana Ross singing “Stop in the Name of Love.”

“Thanks, Ghost Lady,” he said, “but I don’t need money. I need other help.”

“What kind of help?” I asked. I held on to the money in case Everett changed his mind.

“Ghost help,” he insisted. Jeannie, to my left, stifled a snicker. She doesn’t believe in ghosts, especially not the ones in my house. Jeannie has seen objects fly by her face, holes inexplicably open in walls, watched her best friend (me), my mother, daughter and Jeannie’s own husband, Tony, all hold conversations with the local spirits (in Tony’s case, one-sided conversations), and still she refuses to acknowledge their reality. Her complete denial is a talent I sometimes wish I could cultivate in myself. It would make life so much simpler.

Jeannie is very persistent. Some would say stubborn, but not me.

“What do you mean, ghost help?” she asked Everett, clearly amused by the whole conversation.

Everett, who never used the bench outside Stud Muffin (“That’s for paying customers”), gestured toward it, beckoning us to sit down. But we were on a tight schedule. Jeannie had to get back to her job after this quick lunch break, and I had to get back to the guesthouse to greet newcomers this afternoon, so we chose to remain standing.

“I’m being haunted,” Everett said. “I’ve got ghosts after me.”

I’ve been able to see some—not all—ghosts ever since I suffered a head injury after I bought the guesthouse, so I immediately looked around to scout the area. There
were
some ghosts nearby on Ocean Avenue, but that’s not unusual. Nothing looked threatening. I could see an elderly couple hovering over a bench half a block down, a policeman from about 1950, judging from his uniform, who appeared to be patrolling his beat a foot above the pavement, and a small tabby cat that was just lying around, albeit with nothing holding him up. He stretched and looked bored.

“How do you know there are ghosts after you?” I asked Everett. “I don’t see anyone following you now.”

Jeannie gave me a look that indicated she thought I was patronizing the unfortunate mentally ill man, but I curled my lip and sneered at her—a talent I’d been practicing for exactly this purpose—and turned my attention back to Everett.

“Been getting vibes,” he said. “Been hearing people say things.” That was it?

“What do you want me to do?” I asked him. “How can I help?”

Everett looked surprised, as if I should have known. “Make them stop,” he said. Simple.

“If I could do that . . .” I started to say. It was a knee-jerk reaction. Sometimes having ghosts in the house is not as much fun as you might think.

Perhaps I should explain.

I’d bought the Victorian at 123 Seafront Avenue specifically to turn it into a guesthouse (and no, it’s
not
a bed and breakfast, although I’d started providing coffee and tea in the mornings lately and had been thinking about asking my mother for cooking lessons) less than two years earlier. While I was doing the necessary repairs and renovations, I got hit in the head with a bucket of wall compound, and when I recovered, I could see there were two ghosts on the property I’d just bought.

Paul Harrison had been a fledgling private detective in his thirties when he died. He’d been hired to protect Maxie Malone, a 28-year-old newly minted interior designer. The protection hadn’t worked out that well, though, as both Paul and Maxie were poisoned the day after he was hired, and they both died in what, almost a year later, became my house.

They were both stuck on the property—that is, they were unable to leave it—at that time, and if I wanted to keep the building into which I’d just sunk my entire life savings, my divorce settlement and the receipts from a lawsuit I’d settled (never mind), I was stuck with them.

Paul wasn’t bad company; he’s a thoughtful, considerate man who might have appealed to me in other ways if he’d been, you know, alive. But Maxie . . . well, my mother says she has “good intentions.” Perhaps. Maxie also likes to drive me insane, and ever since she’s gained the ability to move around outside my property (which Paul still can’t do; the rules seem to change from ghost to ghost), she’s almost inescapable.

Paul compensates by being able to contact other ghosts through some sort of telepathy I call the Ghosternet because I don’t have a better name for it. He goes off to some remote corner of the property and manages to send and receive messages from other dead people. I try not to think about it too much, to tell you the truth. Except when it can be useful. Other times, Paul likes to put forth on the Ghosternet that he (meaning we) can investigate for the deceased, which has historically led us (meaning me) into trouble.

All in all, I can’t say I was always crazy about having ghosts in the house. My mother and my daughter, Melissa, however, were very pleased; it turned out that they’d had the ability to see and hear ghosts all their lives but had never mentioned that little detail for fear of “upsetting” me (to be fair, it probably would have sent me into therapy). They still see more ghosts than I do, and there are days I wished they were still the only ones in the family with the “skill” to do so. That sentiment has changed somewhat since my father, who passed away a few years ago, started dropping by regularly to visit with me and his granddaughter. On those days, I’m more than glad to be able to communicate with the dead.

“I don’t know how to make your ghosts go away,” I told Everett. “But if you take this five dollars, you can go inside and Jenny will give you some soup.” I extended the money again.

Everett gave me a disdainful look. “I don’t think soup is going to keep the ghosts away,” he said. He took the money, though, and shuffled off, mumbling to himself that even the ghost lady wasn’t going to help.

I didn’t have time to explain, though, because once he moved, I noticed that Kerin Murphy had been standing behind him, no doubt listening in on our conversation. I’d heard Kerin, who had once been a queen bee in the Harbor Haven PTSO (Parent Teacher Student Organization, and no, it’s not the PTA), had returned to town after an absence of more than a year, following a separation from her husband. It was rumored she’d fled Harbor Haven for South Florida and a waitress job at an IHOP, but this was the first time I’d laid eyes on her since her resurfacing. She gave me a hollow smile and approached.

“The sharks are circling,” Jeannie muttered under her breath.

We probably should have tried to leave, but Kerin was too quick. “Why, Alison Kerby,” she said. “It’s been much too long.”

“Compared to what?” Jeannie was still close enough to me that I could hear her murmur, but Kerin was out of range.

“I know!” I pretended to be enthusiastic. If Kerin could, I could. “How have you been?”

Kerin twisted her face into an expression she must have thought looked contemplative but came across sort of constipated. “It’s been a trial,” she answered. “But I think we’re through the rough spots now.” The “rough spots” presumably included Kerin’s husband and all of Harbor Haven finding out about her affair with a real estate mogul. For this, I was fairly sure, Kerin blamed me. I’d been the one who’d discovered the truth while investigating Paul’s and Maxie’s murders, but it wasn’t
my
fault that everyone else in town had found out.
I
don’t run the local newspaper.

I just have a good friend who does.

“I’m so glad to hear it,” I lied. “You remember Jeannie, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Kerin said flatly. She didn’t need to be nice to Jeannie, because Jeannie lived in storm-torn Lavallette (although her home was intact), not Harbor Haven, and her son, Oliver, still less than a year old, would probably never attend Harbor Haven schools. Therefore, Jeannie, in Kerin’s world, didn’t exist.

“I feel exactly the same way,” Jeannie said, taking Kerin’s hand in hers.

I flashed a look at Jeannie in the sort of language only very close friends can exchange without fear of retribution, and she let go of Kerin’s hand. “Well, we should be moving on,” I said pleasantly. Sort of pleasantly. I’m pretty sure I didn’t actually gnash my teeth.

“Oh, I don’t want to hold you up,” Kerin said. “But I’m wondering. Why didn’t you help Everett with his problem?”

Huh? “I’m sorry?” I said. That’s the polite version of
huh?

“Everett,” Kerin repeated, as if it were the identity of the homeless man that was the confusing part of the question. “He wanted you to help him with a ghost problem. Why didn’t you?”

Jeannie’s face hardened, but she knows I don’t let her off her leash unless I think I can’t handle the situation myself.

“You were listening to our conversation?” I asked, just to buy a little time and try to figure out Kerin’s motives.

“Well, I didn’t mean to
eavesdrop
,” she said, affronted at the very notion. Clearly, this was my fault. “But I was right there.” She pointed to where she had stood, perhaps in an attempt to prove she’d been there.

“Must have been hard to ignore,” Jeannie said. “What with us speaking at normal volume and everything.”

I’d say the situation was threatening to turn ugly, but it hadn’t been that gorgeous when it had started. “I didn’t help Everett because I
can’t
help him,” I said. “I’m not a social worker, and I’m not a psychiatrist.”

“No,” Kerin agreed. “You’re the ghost lady.”

Jeannie made a sound like
pfwah
, which indicated that she considered Kerin’s comment something other than brilliant.

“I’m aware that’s what people around town call me,” I said, through what I hoped were not clenched teeth. “But you should know better, Kerin.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “I know better than to know better.”

Kerin had witnessed actual ghostly behavior at my house and had gone around telling many people in town what she’d seen. Rumors had always circulated about my house being haunted, but everybody sort of believed them in the abstract, not the concrete. Kerin’s assertions had been dismissed as the lunatic ravings of a vengeful mind. Because that was more fun.

“You don’t really buy all that stuff, do you?” Jeannie asked.

“It doesn’t matter what people say,” I attempted. “I couldn’t help Everett, or I would have. But his problem isn’t something I can fix.”

Kerin narrowed her eyes. “Of course,” she said. “Well, I’ll see you around town, Alison.” She turned and walked away without acknowledging Jeannie again.

Jeannie shook her head as she watched Kerin turn the corner and disappear. “People in this town are awfully protective of that homeless guy,” she said.

“We are,” I agreed as we headed back to where Jeannie’s car was parked. “He’s a local institution.”

“Your pal there is the one who belongs in an institution,” she said, gesturing toward Kerin’s last known location. “The ghost lady. Really.”

Really.

No. Really.

I had to admit, the ghost-lady thing was more than just a rumor about the house being haunted. See, the ghosts are sort of an asset to my business, in a strange way. (As if they could be an asset in anything
but
a strange way.) Just before I opened for guests, I was contacted by a company called Senior Plus Tours, which provides vacation experiences with a little something extra to people over a certain age. Someone at the tour company had heard tales of spooky happenings at 123 Seafront—in part because word had gotten to them of the shenanigans the night Kerin was there—and offered me a deal: Senior Plus Tours would guarantee a certain number of guests per season as long as I could assure them there would be ghostly “interactions” at least twice a day.