The Hostess With the Ghostess

by E. J. Copperman

  Molly, I noticed, was watching the area in which Paul flew in with a delighted grin on her face.

  “This is the Cranbury police report on Keith Johnson’s murder,” Paul said excitedly. “And I believe there is significant information here.” He floated himself over quickly to a side table and spread the papers out on top for me to peruse. Melissa put Molly down, a tad reluctantly, and made her way to the table to have a look. She’d been denied this long and wasn’t going to let it go one moment longer.

  My cell phone buzzed. Madame Lorraine: Paul Harrison is in great pain. She says that about everybody. I didn’t answer.

  “See here,” Paul said, pointing to the top form, which had been filled out by an Officer Hirway. “The cause of death was clearly drowning, but the officer notes that Cassidy Van Doren was absolutely bone dry when he and his partner arrived. For a larger man to have been held down by a woman Cassidy’s size, there would have been a good deal of splashing, you’d think. Cassidy was not showing any signs of having interacted with water. There was a small towel nearby, which Cassidy said she’d used on her hands after checking Keith for a pulse.”

  “Richard said the physical evidence didn’t seem to favor Cassidy as the killer,” I reminded him. “This bears out that opinion, but it doesn’t really add anything.”

  Paul was grinning broadly. He not only loved that I was engaged in the case, but he had a secret he was about to reveal that he could barely contain. The man is incorrigible.

  “There was some denim fabric in the bathwater,” Melissa said. She pointed at the form.

  That took some of the wind out of Paul’s sails. His grin faded to a tight smile. “Yes,” he said. “That matches up with the idea that the person who killed Keith Johnson was in the tub with him, possibly to hold his head underwater while he drowned, because Johnson was not wearing denim.”

  “What about the water?” I asked just to remind them I had some part in these proceedings. When we had dealt with a drowning previously, the kind of water found in the victim’s lungs had been a productive clue.

  “What about what water?” Jeannie was walking back into the room with Oliver, who was looking quite pleased with himself.

  “I was asking Melissa if she had water boiling,” I said. While it’s possible—and sometimes entertaining—to let Jeannie find her own rationalizations for the ghost experiences she has, it saves an endless amount of time if I just cover for myself right on the spot, I’ve decided.

  “No, you don’t have to boil the noodles for lasagna,” Liss answered. Not only is she able to help me gloss over something for Jeannie, but she also likes to teach me things about cooking. It’s adorable, as if I’ll ever use the information she gives me.

  Oliver toddled off to play with some toys Tony had laid out on the floor across the den. It’s the largest room in the house and has the most playing space on the floor. Molly, not yet certain of her walking skills, sort of cruised after him, holding herself up on various pieces of furniture. I’d gotten a few of Melissa’s old toys from the basement and left them—cleaned, of course—near where Jeannie had set up the kids’ area. They headed for Liss’s toys because they were not familiar.

  “In any event, the denim fibers found in the water is interesting,” Paul continued. He was on a roll and not to be denied. I pretended I wasn’t listening to him as my mother sat in one of the closer armchairs claiming to be “tiring out.” She wanted to listen to Paul without being blatant about it too. Josh even sat in a facing chair to make it look good. “Where did it come from, and whose property was it? If Cassidy Van Doren did just find the body of her stepfather, she was fully dressed when the police arrived, so it would appear someone else had clearly been in the room.”

  Jeannie started in on some story about her job at an insurance company, about how her boss was ridiculous, and Josh, who at least could hear her, nodded dutifully. I just love that man.

  Melissa smothered a small laugh.

  Luckily my father was there and could talk to Paul. “So whose jeans were they? Were they a particular brand or something?”

  “No, we weren’t that lucky.” Paul was pleased to have someone paying him attention even when he knew those of us still using oxygen couldn’t do that. “We don’t know anything about the denim except that it was there; the county lab isn’t that well equipped. They could have been bought in any clothing store.”

  “Seems to me it’s likely a woman,” my father said. “The only male suspect you have is the business partner who was with him in the hotel, and I bet he wears a business suit to bed. Those business guys are like that.”

  “That’s very good, Jack,” Paul said.

  My mother gave Dad a proud smile when Jeannie thought Mom was looking at a poster I have hanging on the wall of a pair of flip-flops left on the beach. It’s a classy place, my guesthouse.

  “I don’t think we can find out anything else about the fibers, but the county investigator report should show if there was makeup or aftershave in the water,” Paul, that master of mirth, answered. “That’s something we’ll have to get Maxie working on.”

  On cue, Maxie and Everett dropped down through the ceiling. She was in her usual outfit of skintight jeans and a black T-shirt, this one bearing the legend, “LEGEND.”

  “Where’s my computer?” she demanded. “I was supposed to get it back.”

  I glanced at Paul, noted Jeannie was still bending Josh’s ear, and moved over to the table where he’d spread out the printed documents. Paul knew I’d have to be very quiet so he moved down toward me to hear.

  “I thought Richard was giving that back to Maxie when he was done printing out the police report,” I whispered.

  “That was my understanding.” Paul was whispering too for no logical reason. “I’ll find him.” He moved through the wall and vanished.

  “This is getting inconvenient,” Maxie said. “I need that laptop or I can’t keep up with Grey’s Anatomy.” Well, at least she had a good reason.

  “We’re working on it,” I hissed, maybe too loudly because Jeannie looked up.

  Paul phased back through the ceiling this time, Richard close behind him. “I understand there is some question about the whereabouts of the laptop computer,” Richard said.

  “Damn right,” Maxie shot back. “You were supposed to give it back to me and you didn’t.”

  “I did. I left it for you on the table in the room I was using, as we agreed.”

  Maxie had originally suggested Richard leave the laptop in Melissa’s room when he was finished with it (which would be okay because Melissa had given permission), but he had been adamant about not going into “the little girl’s bedroom” and said she could come get it at the appropriate time. I was guessing now that hadn’t gone as expected.

  “Well, it’s not there,” Maxie insisted.

  “Yes, I’ve seen that. I went with you and looked. I know it isn’t there. But it was when I left the room.”

  Maxie fixed me with a glare. “My laptop is missing,” she said.

  “That’s not all,” Mom said with a dry rasp in her voice. “Look.” She pointed. We looked.

  On the opposite wall, right next to my America’s National Parks calendar, was a piece of paper with very bold print in a very large font reading, DON’T LOOK FOR ME.

  And it was being held up on the wall by one of my thicker kitchen knives.

  Chapter 15

  A thorough search of the house—and I mean thorough, because Maxie wasn’t kidding around—failed to turn up the missing computer. I’d excused myself from Jeannie’s presence by saying I needed to change my clothes, which drew a few incredulous looks from my best friend, my husband, and my father, and checked the guest rooms myself. I don’t like to let anyone into the rooms guests are occupying besides me and Melissa.

  Paul had insisted on the search despite the warning on my wall, which I estimated I could repair with some wall compound and the paint I’d used on the kitchen walls, assuming I still had i
t marked properly. Go remember whether it was called “Mountain Peak White” or “Bavarian Cream.”

  After not finding the computer, I had to actually change clothes to make the story work and put on a pair of khakis and a blue scoop-neck top Josh especially liked. If I was going to perform a ruse, at least there should be an upside to it.

  I went back downstairs after conferring with Maxie, Paul, Everett, and Richard on the upstairs landing. Maxie, furious with me of all people for “losing” her laptop, ended up zooming through the ceiling, no doubt on her way to Jupiter. Paul looked distressed and made a comment about Richard’s files being lost with the laptop. Everett went after Maxie. Slowly. He knew when to hang back. Richard simply looked stupefied and didn’t say much of anything.

  The threat knifed to my wall was unspecific but effective; there was a knot in my stomach, and I wasn’t even sure why. Maybe whoever put it there just couldn’t find a thumbtack or some tape.

  Halfway down the stairs, I ran into Abby Lesniak, who looked at me, opened her mouth as if to speak, waved her hand in futility, and kept on walking upstairs. I was a failure at so many things that day.

  The center island in the kitchen was set for dinner, so those of us who weren’t past the need for food sat down and started paying Melissa compliments on her work. The stools next to the island are kind of high for Oliver and Molly, but they’re used to having their own little table near their mom and getting the same food as everybody else. Well, Ollie does. Molly is a little young for some of it, but she was getting a small piece of lasagna tonight.

  “So what’s the latest on this murder you’re detecting?” Jeannie asked once we were settled in. I de-ghosted the story and told her everything “I” had found out so far, which added up to not very much. I left out the stuff about the knife holding up a threatening message (which I had quickly taken down), because Jeannie would try to help and end up scaring the living crap out of me.

  “Sounds like you should hire out Yankee Stadium and gather your suspects together,” Tony said. Then he looked at Melissa and actually pointed at his fork. “Is this Worcestershire sauce I’m tasting on the ground beef?”

  Liss and Mom passed a conspiratorial look. “Yes,” my daughter said. “It’s Worcestershire sauce, but it’s not ground beef. It’s veggie ground meat.”

  “We call it fake meat,” Mom said.

  “Well, it’s really good,” Tony told her. Liss nodded her thanks.

  “It’s not about the number of suspects,” Jeannie told me. “You have too many because you’re not looking in the right direction.”

  Having played Ethel to her Lucy for years, I knew a cue when I heard one. “What’s the right direction?” I asked.

  “Motive. Right now you’re paying attention to who could have killed these two people, but because the murders seem so different, the real question is who would have wanted to kill them, and you get that when you figure out why.”

  “Well, Mr. Johnson had a lot of money,” Melissa told her. “That seems like the most likely motive to kill him, doesn’t it? And you said yourself that Paul’s—Mr. Harrison probably died because he’d found out something that was going to expose the murderer. So don’t we know the motives?” Liss is an excellent student and, I’m afraid, is taking to this investigation business a little too well.

  Jeannie shook her head. “We’re making an assumption,” she said. “Just because this Keith Johnson had a lot of money doesn’t mean that’s the only reason somebody might want him dead. Maybe he was cheating on his wife. Maybe he cheated a business partner. Maybe he was mean to his kids when they were growing up. Maybe he complained when the staff in the bed-and-breakfast he was in short-sheeted him. We just don’t know.”

  Paul, who had floated into the room just when Jeannie had started to speak, immediately began stroking his goatee, so I knew she was onto something.

  “It’s true,” he said. “We have been following theories and not facts. I am rusty.”

  He’d gone more than four months without investigating a case before, so I didn’t think lack of practice was the problem here.

  “People tend to be more careful and distracted when family members are involved,” I said.

  “What’s that got to do with it?” Jeannie asked. “You have something on some member of Johnson’s family?”

  “Families don’t do that,” my mother sniffed. Then she thought about it. “Except when they do.” My father floated down toward her and put a hand on her shoulder. Mom has been sensitive to ghosts all her life and sensitive to my father for decades. I think she actually felt his hand because she smiled and had to stop herself from putting her own hand on his.

  “So the first move we should make,” I began, “would be to determine motive. We need Keith Johnson’s financial records to rule out the idea that money is the only reason to kill him. And the laptop that has those records is missing.”

  Jeannie, who had been watching her children eat and not saying anything about the way they were doing so, looked up at me. “Your laptop is missing?” she asked.

  Well, this was going to be tricky. Sort of. “Not mine,” I said. “One of the guests’.”

  “Ooh,” Jeannie said. “That can’t be good, with you being the hostess and everything.”

  The guests actually do sign a waiver with Senior Plus Tours saying that any loss of personal property is not the fault of the tour service, and I have a form covering my own liability that they sign their first day at the guesthouse. I also offer them a safe in the movie room in which they can lock their valuables if they choose. But since the computer in question did not actually belong to a guest (because Maxie was kind of a resident, I guess), I wasn’t sweating the issue very hard.

  “It’ll turn up,” I said. “I’m not worried. But it’s the files.”

  “Why would one of your guests have files from the case you’re investigating?” Jeannie asked. Oh, yeah, that was why Melissa had been frantically waving at me over Jeannie’s shoulder when I’d started this charade.

  “I accidentally put a thumb drive into the wrong laptop,” I said. “They look exactly the same.” Kick save and a beauty, I thought.

  Jeannie had other ideas. “Somebody else has a laptop as old as yours?” She laughed. “Who knew two of them had survived?”

  “That’s not the point. I need the information on those files.”

  “Why don’t you plug the thumb drive into your own laptop?” Jeannie asked. Tony, mouth full of lasagna, knew something was up but didn’t know what because he couldn’t hear the conversation except on my end. He looked down at his children for a way out and found one.

  “Ollie, you have marinara sauce all over your face,” he said with a chuckle.

  “It’s actually a vodka sauce,” Melissa noted.

  But Jeannie had responded as Tony anticipated. She was off her stool and walking over to her son with a damp napkin. There was a time she wouldn’t have approached Oliver with anything short of an antiseptic wipe and a Hazmat suit, but now a paper napkin would do. “You little monkey,” she said. Ollie, sensing what was to come, tried to flee, but his mother was too quick for him. He complained a little, but in seconds his face was being sandblasted.

  I nodded to Tony for the help.

  Josh started clearing plates off the island and putting them in the dishwasher, which we use on the nights Melissa cooks and there are more than three of us creating havoc in the kitchen. Mom started to help, something I couldn’t prevent. My father forgot himself and picked up a plate, then looked at Jeannie and put it back down again. Jeannie, in full disinfectant mode, did not notice.

  The kitchen then went into a state of complete activity. Everyone who wasn’t clearing dishes or cleaning a child’s face was wiping the countertop or putting things back in the refrigerator. Paul asked a few questions about the financial records, but I couldn’t answer him amid all the movement.

  And that was just as well, because once the kitchen and Oliver (and for that matte
r Molly, who had actually tried to press lasagna into her forehead) had been declared both spic and span, I made a quick visual scan of the room.

  Maxie’s laptop was on the counter next to the cereal cabinet. And I knew for a fact it hadn’t been there a short time before.

  I walked over to it and put my hands on the case. Sure enough, the laptop was real. I picked it up and turned back toward the others.

  I wasn’t going to say anything, but Mom saw it first. “That’s the laptop!” she said. “Where did you find it?”

  Every head, living and not, turned toward me holding Maxie’s old-but-not-as-old-as-mine laptop computer. And the only one that didn’t understand what had happened (and, of course, none of us knew how it had been returned) was Jeannie. But that didn’t bother me a bit.

  “That doesn’t look a thing like your laptop!” Jeannie said, laughing. “You really have no head at all for technology, Alison.” See what I mean? She can rationalize anything. This was an easy one.

  “I guess not.” I chuckled, but I was looking at Paul. “I wonder how I missed it before.”

  “Well now you can give it back to your guest,” Jeannie said.

  My friend had, as she often does, given me exactly what I needed without meaning to do so. That’s what besties are for.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I’m going upstairs to do that right now.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Melissa said. Jeannie looked at her a little funny but did not comment. Melissa understood we were going to her room and has a certain sense of propriety about it. Nobody goes up there when Liss isn’t around. That’s fair.

  My mother almost tried to join us, but I headed her off by suggesting she help Jeannie and Tony keep the kids entertained. Everyone agreed to that, and I noted that Paul was already out of the room, no doubt on his way to the attic.