Haunted Guest House Mystery 03-Old Haunts (26 page)

So, in a triumph of maturity and emotional stability, I stormed out of the kitchen and ran up all the stairs to the attic.

There, I encountered the inverted ghost of a rookie private detective and the right-side-up spirit of a perpetually twenty-eight-year-old interior designer, who took one look at me, bared her teeth and flew up onto the roof through the attic ceiling, making a noise like a disgruntled preteen denied tickets to a Justin Bieber concert. Paul, who had been facing away from me, rotated on his head to see who had entered the room.

“So,” I said. “How has
your
day been?”

“Same old, same old,” he answered.

Paul got into sleuth mode when I mentioned Kitty Malone and the Big Bob case, and listened as I updated him on the situation. I did not fill him in on the Julia MacKenzie search, because that one seemed destined to end badly. He understood my ground rules on my attempts to find Julia, and did not ask about my progress. As if there had been some.

When I was finished recounting the day’s events (adding that we had found no
obvious
signs of a break-in at Kitty’s house, even outside the basement windows), and Paul had stroked his beard to a fine froth, he chewed his bottom lip a bit and said, “Interesting that there were no signs of a break-in outside. How did the wrench get into Mrs. Malone’s basement, then?”

“If I could answer even one question about this case, I’d feel like I had a good day,” I told him.

“But I think you’ve analyzed it impeccably, Alison,” Paul told me. “It sounds very much like the police were being led to that discovery by someone who wanted to frame Mrs. Malone, and for some reason, they’re choosing not to see that.”

“Luther kept saying the cops aren’t interested in one biker killing another one,” I told him. “I guess they figure they’ve found a nice easy solution, and they’re not looking a gift horse in the mouth.”

Paul frowned. Upside down, it still didn’t look like a smile, no matter what my mother had told me when I was six. “It’s not like bikers are gang members anymore, really. Most never were. I really don’t want to believe that the police are acting with that level of cynicism. There has to be another explanation.”

“They decided to show Kitty some hospitality because they think she’ll review their jail for Zagat?”

He ignored that, which shows what a wise man he is. Was. Anyway, he said, “If the police aren’t going to be any help, we will have to proceed on our own. It’s dangerous to assume without enough facts, but the only motivation I can imagine for someone to want Kitty to be arrested as the murderer is—”

“To get the real murderer off the hook,” I said, nodding. “But the question becomes, Is the person doing the framing the killer or someone who just wants the killer to go free?”

“A very good question,” Paul agreed. “We might be able to make an investigator out of you after all.” He smiled.

“For a guy who’s upside down, you can be pretty nervy,” I told him. “What are we going to do about that, by the way?”

“Since we don’t know what caused it, I really can’t say how we can cure it,” Paul answered, the smile having left his face. “Unfortunately, we can’t just call Dr. Bombay and get the supernatural pill that will solve the whole problem.”

The
Bewitched
reference made me think of cures. “What has Maxie turned up on her Internet research?” I asked him. “She’s so mad at me about her mom that I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t tell me now if I asked.”

“You two need to work out your problem,” he said. Personally, I believed that any animosity between Maxie and me would evaporate once Kitty was out of jail. If she didn’t get out, well—I didn’t want to think about the problems that would cause for us all. “She told me she’d only done some preliminary research, but so far, she hasn’t found another case like mine.”

“Swell.” Maxie, despite her constant grumbling about being stuck with “desk work,” was a very good online researcher. If she couldn’t find any references on heels-over-head ghosts, it was extremely possible there weren’t any, and we were on our own in trying to get Paul floating on his own two feet again.

“But she did say that there were references, on some very obscure websites, of people like us who could not gain equilibrium just before they moved on to a different plane of existence,” Paul said.

That was a large statement, and it took a moment to sink in. Paul and Maxie, having become ghosts not long after they were murdered, seemed to be on the first, or lowest, level of postlife experience, as it would no doubt be described in brochures, assuming such things existed. Although Paul was always careful to remind me that he had been given “no handbook” on how to be a ghost, we had seen a spirit move on to the next level months before, and it had seemed like a positive experience for him.

“You mean you might be changing?” I asked him.

“Life is constant change,” Paul said. “There’s no reason death can’t be the same thing, I guess. I know this feels different than before, but I can’t really describe how that is.”

“But the only time I saw this happen to somebody, it happened pretty fast,” I said. “This has been more than a day already, and maybe longer.” I found myself arguing against the idea, and I wasn’t immediately sure why I wanted to.

“I’m not saying that’s what it is,” he answered. “Even Maxie said it was just the first try at researching this.”

I mused on that for a while, and stood up, causing Paul to rise higher in the air to maintain eye contact. “Well, assuming you don’t move on to Nirvana before tomorrow, you’re still going to be around for the ghost meet-and-greet, right?”

He smiled. “Yes. I won’t be visible to anyone but you and Melissa, so my…affliction won’t alarm anyone.”

“So, what do I do about Kitty and Big Bob?” I asked him.

“I think the key to this whole question could well be Wilson Meyers,” Paul mused. “His disappearing at the same time as Big Bob is too big a coincidence not to be related. He must know something. We’re going to have to track him down.”

“Any ideas on how?”

“Sit down, Alison,” Paul said. “I’m going to teach you how to find a missing person.”

Just what I’d wanted to learn.

And that’s when it hit me: I knew exactly why it bothered me that Paul might be evolving into the next kind of ghost. The one and only time I’d seen it happen was to a ghost we’d just gotten to know, and he’d been ecstatic as he moved on to the next level.

But then he was gone, and we’d never seen him again.

Twenty-three

“I don’t get it,” said Detective Lieutenant Anita McElone. “I pay my taxes. I donate to charity. I’m nice to small furry animals and I volunteer at the local soup kitchen. So why exactly am I being punished? This is the second time you’ve come in to bother me this week. Is that fair?”

McElone was sitting behind her desk with a fresh iced coffee and a bran muffin. But having been blatantly insulted, I felt it best not to throw gasoline on the fire by noting to McElone that there were worse things that could happen to cops, even if they were being a royal pain.

“I’m not here to torment you. I left Jeannie at home,” I pointed out. “I’m just looking for some help with two missing persons. One of them is actually even missing.”

McElone took an aggressive bite out of the muffin, chewed carefully and swallowed. She would never speak with food in her mouth. “You want me to help you find two missing people, and only one of them is missing? That just makes the other one a person.”

“Well, she’s not
legally
missing; it’s just that I can’t find her,” I explained. Maybe I should have brought Jeannie, after all. It had worked in the past.

“Does it occur to you—as a ‘private investigator’—that asking the police to do all your work for you borders on fraud? I mean, if all you do for your clients is ask me to do something they could ask for themselves, what are you being paid for?” McElone did not move to punch anything in on her keyboard, which probably made sense, since I hadn’t mentioned Wilson Meyers or Julia MacKenzie yet.

“I’m not asking you to do
all
my work, and I don’t appreciate the air quotes around ‘private investigator,’” I told her. “If I had your access to motor-vehicle records and rap sheets, I’d be able to do this myself, but I don’t, so I can’t. Are you going to help me, or do I have to call in the big guns?”

The lieutenant’s eyes widened, but I think the expression was meant to be taken ironically. “You’re not going to bring your mother in to intimidate me again, are you?” she asked. That had worked in the past, too, but not as well. I didn’t take the bait, so she waved her hand toward me. “Okay, let’s see the name of your missing person. The nonmissing one we’ll discuss later.”

I thought that was partially unfair, but any help is better than no help, so I handed her the paper on which I’d printed out (okay, Maxie had printed out) Wilson Meyers’s known information, which was essentially his name. I had no address, no driver’s-license number, no telephone number, no Social Security. I was lucky I knew his first name was “Wilson.”

“Why are you looking for this guy?” McElone asked me.

“He was a friend of Big Bob Benicio, and he disappeared at just about the same time,” I told her.

She furrowed her brow. “I thought they already caught somebody for that murder in Seaside Heights,” she said.

“They did. The wrong person.”

McElone looked at me quickly, to see if I was kidding, and clearly saw that I was not. “How sure are you of your facts?” she wanted to know.

“Sure enough to look into Wilson Meyers. The truth is, anybody who wanted the right solution to the crime, and not the easiest, would be searching for Wilson.” I went on to explain how obviously Kitty Malone was being framed, and McElone listened carefully and did not interrupt as I detailed my evidence. She was annoying, but she’s a good cop.

“I don’t know,” she said when I was finished. “I know a few people in the Seaside Heights department, and they’re not the type to coast like that. Something else must be going on.”

I saw an opening. “Then help me prove it,” I said. “Help me find Wilson Meyers.”

She curled her lower lip a bit at the obvious saleswomanship, but tapped away at her keyboard for a minute or two. “I’m getting a few things on your friend Wilson,” she said. “Get out your notepad.”

Instead, I produced a small digital tape recorder I use when I’m out “in the field,” as Paul says, so he can hear everything someone says to me when I report back to him later. McElone took no notice.

“First, he had a couple of priors on his record even before Benicio got himself killed,” she began. “Minor possession, two for breaking and entering. Burglary. Nothing big, but there were…seven of them all together. But after the approximate date of Benicio’s murder, there’s nothing.”

I nodded. “And no new address, no phone number, nothing like that, right?”

“That’s right.”

I looked to the ceiling in frustration. If the police department’s resources couldn’t raise anything on Wilson, it was looking more and more possible that he was dead or had vanished so well I’d never be able to find him myself. What was I going to—

“Except…” McElone said.

My neck practically spasmed as I got her back in my sights. “Except what?” I asked.

“This is weird,” McElone said. So I waited.

Nothing.

“What’s weird?” I asked.

“There’s nothing on Wilson Meyers.”

“That’s not so weird,” I pointed out.

“Maybe not, but I just got a hit on someone named Meyer Wilson.” McElone looked at me with a cocked eyebrow.

What
? “That’s too big a coincidence to be a coincidence, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“How old is our Mr. Wilson? Does he fit the description?”

McElone looked at the screen, but wouldn’t turn it to let me see. “Right age, but he’s a little smaller than your description of Wilson Meyers, and the one in the previous data. So I guess it’s not him. Except…”

“
Again
‘except’?”

“The description comes from the driver’s-license data,” she said. “They don’t weigh or measure you at the Motor Vehicle Commission. They take the information you fill in on the form. So he could have lied about his height and weight. And he seems to have moved into Pennsylvania about fifteen minutes after Wilson Meyers stopped hanging around the New Jersey Shore.”

“Why is there a hit on Meyer Wilson?” I asked. “Drugs?”

McElone shook her head. “Speeding ticket.” She punched some keys. “Yours was a motorcycle guy, right?”

“Yeah,” I answered. “Loved his bike, the guys tell me. Why?”

“Well, in Norristown, Pennsylvania, he was driving a Ford Focus.”

A Ford Focus. Wilson Meyers, former scary biker. That didn’t seem to add up. “How fast was he going?” I asked.

McElone checked her screen and put on reading-glasses to make sure she was reading it right. “Twenty-nine in a twenty-five-mile zone,” she said.

I was doing my very best not to repeat everything she said just to give myself time to absorb it, so instead I said, “That seems a little out of character.”