The Thrill of the Haunt

by E. J. Copperman

  This conversation was passing the edges of ridiculous and heading for . . . something beyond ridiculous. But Tom and Libby, standing discreetly by and trying to look like they weren’t listening, were listening. I had to be careful with my response.

  “Why, that’s just silly,” I attempted, trying to sound like Kerin had suggested that I might be working too hard or should plant palm trees in the front yard. “That’s just not what is happening here.”

  “Then what is happening?” Kerin demanded. “You’re the one who sees ghosts. You base your whole business on it. Do you deny their existence?” I couldn’t do so in good conscience, because Maxie was floating down from the ceiling and Paul had wandered in from the bathroom.

  I kept the light tone in my voice, which might have been my biggest triumph of the day. “I’m just saying that I haven’t got anything to report yet, and that you should expect an operation like this to take a little time. It’s not the kind of thing that can be completed quickly.”

  Tom Hill made a show of examining an “antique” I had on a shelf over the fireplace. It was a small figurine of a sea captain holding a fish, and I’d picked it up at a flea market in Englishtown for seventy-five cents because I felt the guesthouse should have something ocean-ish. Maxie hates that thing, and as with most such issues involving interior design, I am loath to admit she is right.

  “We’re not paying you all that money to stand still,” Kerin said.

  If she thought that was a threat I’d take to heart, it was necessary for me to disabuse her of that assumption. “If you’re not happy with my service, I can recommend some alternatives in the area,” I said. “Feel free to call them.”

  Kerin’s voice took on a growl. “Oh no,” she said. “You’re not getting out of it that easily. I’m going to call for a status report every day until this case is solved. You can count on it.” That was it; I was definitely having the landline disconnected.

  “And I can assure you that you’ll hear about every bit of progress that is made,” I said. My tone wasn’t fooling anybody. “Nice to hear from you, Kerin.” I hung up before she could make some other threat. I just wasn’t in the mood.

  “Man,” Maxie drawled. “Some customers are so demanding.”

  I turned directly toward Tom and Libby. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” I told them. “What can I do for you?”

  Libby walked over and Maxie assessed her but said nothing. That’s not unusual for Maxie; I think most of the time she’d like to pretend there are no guests in the house, though she does love to amuse herself by interacting with them at the spook shows.

  “Alison,” Libby began, “Tom and I were wondering if you might be able to move us to another bedroom in the house.”

  Paul’s eyes narrowed. He has a sense about when things aren’t quite right, and it appeared to be surfacing with Libby’s not terribly unusual request.

  Mentally, I went through my room inventory. There were three guest bedrooms being used at the moment, the Hills and the Rosens in two of them, and . . .

  Of course. “Your room is right next to Cybill’s, isn’t it?” I asked.

  Libby tried to avoid my eyes by looking at the picture frame on the table next to her, but she nodded. “Yes,” she said. “The chanting goes on well into the night, and it’s something of a . . . problem for us, you understand. We don’t want to be a bother.”

  “It’s not at all a problem,” I assured her. “I have another room you can move into right away, right here on the first floor, where you won’t be disturbed at all. Is that all right?”

  Tom broke in before Libby could answer. “That would be great,” he said. “You have no idea how that woman has been keeping us awake. I mean, I don’t want to run down anybody’s religion, but I need to sleep, you know?”

  “Tom,” Libby admonished.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I told them. “I’ll get you a key to the downstairs bedroom right now.” They both seemed quite relieved and went upstairs to pack their belongings for the long journey down one flight of stairs.

  “There’s more to Cybill than you’d expect,” Paul suggested as I walked toward the kitchen to open the locked cabinet where I keep the room keys. “She believes she has a mission here, and I don’t think it’s one that’s especially helpful.”

  “She’s a pain, he’s saying,” Maxie chimed in. “And I agree. Let’s boot her out.”

  “You two seem to forget that I need this guesthouse to succeed so I can keep my daughter in shelter and food,” I growled. “You guys do what you do, and let me do what I do. I’ll go deal with Cybill.” And it was at that moment that I realized I didn’t know exactly where Cybill was. So much for trying to keep close tabs on her. “Uh, you two don’t happen to know where she is right now, do you?”

  They looked at each other. “Oh, we wouldn’t want to step over the line,” Maxie said. “You do what you do. We’ll do what we do.” In an instant, they were both gone.

  I sighed. I probably should have been a little more diplomatic in dealing with the ghosts, but there are days when they’re like close friends and days when they’re like annoying insects. Today was a day to hide the can of Raid.

  I pushed the kitchen door open and found Mom and Melissa putting the final touches on a macaroni-and-cheese casserole I happily would have eaten now, even though it hadn’t officially been cooked yet. “The bread crumbs create a crunchy crust on top,” Mom was saying. “You put it in the oven, and we’ll clean up while it bakes.” Okay, so it wasn’t baked yet. These technical terms were overwhelming.

  “Hi, guys,” I said with a veneer of cheerfulness that couldn’t hide my fatigue. It had been a long day, and it wasn’t close to over yet. “How’s dinner going?”

  “We’re baking it now,” Melissa answered.

  “Melissa did it almost all by herself,” Mom told me, as Liss slid the baking dish—did I own a baking dish, or had Mom brought that with her?—into the oven.

  Liss tried to hide her beaming pride but failed pretty seriously. “Grandma told me what to do every step,” she said.

  “Don’t be modest,” Mom told her. “It was you all the way.” It was such a nice gesture, and Melissa was so happy, that some of the weight on my neck seemed to ease.

  “Is Dad coming over later?” I asked Mom. “I wanted to ask him about something.”

  “I don’t know,” Mom answered. “Is it important?”

  “Not really.” I wanted to talk to my father about the white paint I’d used, which wasn’t exactly covering the red marker on the walls. The weird message underneath was still showing through. It occurred to me that I could also ask Josh when he arrived. If we were speaking to each other. I walked to the locked cabinet where I keep room keys while Mom and Melissa set about cleaning up the countertops, which didn’t need that much cleaning. Mom has always made it a policy to wash and put away as she cooks, so by the time she’s finished there isn’t a huge cleanup job left to do. I looked over at Melissa. “Thanks for making dinner, baby,” I said.

  “Dinner?” Melissa asked, a sly smile on her face. “Macaroni and cheese isn’t dinner. It’s a . . . side dish, right Grandma?”

  I got the key out and locked the cabinet again as Mom answered her, “You’ve got it, honey. We’ll get to the rest in a minute.”

  I walked out of the kitchen and found Tom and Libby ready and waiting at the hallway entrance with their two suitcases on the floor next to them. “This is so good of you,” Libby told me. “I hope we’re not being unreasonable.”

  “Not at all,” I assured her as I led them to the downstairs suite, which has its own bath. I usually charge more for it, but under the circumstances I thought it was the perfect solution. “You’re entitled to a relaxing vacation, and I’m happy to do anything I can to help.”

  Before we got to the bedroom door, Paul appeared at the other end of the corridor, and his face told me what he had to say was important. That’s never good.

  “Here we go,” I said,
my voice rising about half an octave. I unlocked the door and opened it, and handed Tom the key. “Enjoy the new room,” I said. Normally with the suite, I give a little tour, showing the guests the bathroom attached and reveling in the extra space, but that’s really just to show off why it costs more than a regular room, and it appeared that I should be in a hurry.

  “Oh, I’m sure we will,” Libby told me. “It’s beautiful.” Since I had worked fairly hard on that room when we moved in, I was proud to hear her say so. But Paul had business, so I wished Tom and Libby well and hightailed it for the game room, the closest private space for me to talk to invisible people.

  “Okay, what’s up?” I get abrupt in such situations, particularly when I was less than thrilled with the day to begin with.

  “There’s someone here I think you need to meet,” Paul told me.

  Josh would be here in forty-five minutes. Mom and Melissa were putting some elaborate dinner surprise together in the kitchen, perhaps because of that. I had guests in the house, and a crazed local posse was displeased with me because it was taking me more than two days to find out who repeatedly stabbed the local homeless guy in a gas station bathroom. Another client would undoubtedly be upset that I wasn’t looking into who had hanged her husband’s mistress with an extension cord. And a loopy self-described exorcist wanted to rid my house of, among other people, my father.

  “I’m not sure I need to meet more people right now,” I told Paul. “Where is this person, and how do I get out of the meeting? I’m guessing this is someone who’s . . .” I try not to use the word dead to describe people when Paul is around. He’s sensitive about no longer breathing.

  “Yes, it’s someone like me,” he answered. “And he’s waiting in the basement. I think it’s important you meet with him.”

  But before I could answer, I saw a transparent man, in his sixties if I were any judge, rise up through the floor into the game room. He was wearing a heavy wool peacoat and a knitted wool hat. Maxie changes her clothes about once a minute, and Paul will occasionally appear in something other than his traditional jeans and flannel shirt, but this guy had clearly died in winter and hadn’t given any thought to his attire since.

  “Alison,” Paul said, “this is Matthew Kinsler.”

  Uh-oh. “Mr. Kinsler?” I said.

  “Yes,” the man said. “Joyce Kinsler was my daughter.”

  Eighteen

  “This just isn’t fair,” I said.

  Matthew Kinsler looked at Paul for some sort of explanation. Paul didn’t answer him but turned his attention to me. “Mr. Kinsler wants to engage our services,” he said.

  There weren’t many ways a dead man could have discovered a private investigator specializing in such cases. “You put out an ad on the Ghosternet again, didn’t you?” I accused Paul.

  He held up his hands in front of him. “Nope,” he answered.

  “I heard about you from someone I know,” Matthew explained. “There aren’t a lot of detectives who can see us.”

  I felt my eyes narrow. “Who?” I asked.

  “Who, what?”

  “Who? What person, or spirit, that you know recommended me?” I crossed my arms. “How do I even know you are Joyce Kinsler’s father?”

  Matthew cocked an eyebrow. “Her kitchen had exposed beams and no center island, and still had unpacked boxes from when she moved in two months ago. She drove a 2005 Toyota RAV4, until last Thursday, when she’d just bought a new Acura. And when she was eight years old, she got her finger stuck in a car window and we had to take her to the emergency room. She had a permanent crook in her left index finger. And she cried most of that night. Is there anything else you want to know?”

  I leaned on one of the windowsills. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you any more than you’ve already been hurt.”

  He shook his head. “I can understand your uncertainty. But I can tell you that Arlice Crosby recommended you. She speaks very highly of you.”

  I wouldn’t have thought the service Arlice had received was much worth recommending. But she was a dear, generous woman. Paul smiled behind his hand; he’d told me word of mouth would build our business. His hand was transparent, so hiding the smile was less effective than he might have hoped. The fact that almost all our clients were dead and couldn’t pay was irrelevant. To him.

  “How do you know Arlice?” I asked Matthew.

  “I hang around a bit at Hanrahan’s, the tavern over on Ocean Avenue—spent a bit of time there when I was alive,” Matthew answered. “Arlice drops by now and again, and we have struck up the occasional conversation. When this happened to Joyce . . .” He trailed off.

  “How did you find out where I live?” I asked. “How did you get here?” Maybe I could prove to him that he’d come to the wrong place, and he would go away and not ask me to look into Joyce’s death. That would be good.

  “Arlice told me where you live. And you’re in the phone book,” Matthew answered, with a slight tone of duh.

  That was it. I had to get unlisted from the phone book as soon as I had a spare moment to find out how you did that. Which would probably be sometime when I reached my mid-seventies. All I managed was, “Oh, yeah.”

  “I wasn’t there when my daughter passed,” Matthew said without prompting. “I was just roaming around on the beach, watching the tide come in. And by the time I got back to her house, just to look in on her, she was already . . . in the body bag.” He bit his lip and then took on a determined look to keep from doing whatever ghosts do in place of tearing up.

  The afterlife, I have discovered through trial and (mostly) error, is not an orderly place. Paul couldn’t contact Joyce and ask her how she died because people seem to take at least a few days to “reawaken” as ghosts, and some apparently skip this level of existence entirely and are never visible spirits; the rules are fluid at best. The afterlife seems to be run by the same people who brought you the Internal Revenue Service.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated. “I wish there were something I could do.” And halfway through the word something, I knew I’d made a monumental tactical error.

  “There is,” Matthew said. “You can find out who killed my daughter. I can’t pay you, but I can figure out a way to get my ex-wife to write you a check, maybe do it myself. I’m very good at forging her signature. How much do you need?”

  “Mr. Kinsler . . .”

  “Matthew.”

  I really didn’t want to get to know him, because that would make me feel even worse. But I said, “Matthew. I don’t need you writing checks on your ex-wife’s account for me. I’d end up in jail for forgery.”

  “But I’d be the one doing the forging,” he protested.

  “I doubt they’d try to lock you up.”

  Matthew nodded. That was true.

  I wanted to be careful and not point the finger at the Boffices. I’d never met Matthew before, and an angry ghost has a lot of resources at his disposal. “It’s not the point, anyway,” I continued. “I’m concerned that you think I can do something the police can’t do. I know the detective on the case in Eatontown, and he’s doing everything he can to find out what happened to your daughter. You don’t need me, Matthew, honestly. Let the police do their job.”

  “I never trusted a cop in my life,” Matthew Kinsler said. “I’m not going to start now.”

  “Detective Sprayne is very good,” I said, despite not knowing whether he was even competent at his job. “He’ll find out what you need to know, and if you follow him around, you’ll find out just as soon as he does.”

  Matthew shook his head. “You’ll care. You’ll get some justice for my daughter,” he said. “You have a little girl. You know how it feels. Please, Ms. Kerby, don’t say you won’t help me. You may be the only detective in the world who can look me in the eye and tell me what I need to know. I have no place else to turn. You have to help me.”

  I hate it when they’re persuasive. Especially the dead ones. Paul looked at me wi
th puppy dog eyes, begging for the challenge. I felt like throwing him a liver treat.

  “Okay,” I grumbled. “Tell me what you know.”

  • • •

  It turned out that Matthew didn’t know much about his daughter’s death, but he knew plenty about her life. “I didn’t stick around when that Boffice guy showed up. He’s been visiting Joyce since around the beginning of the year, first in her old place in Avon and now the new one in Eatontown,” he said. “I left whenever I saw him. There are things a father never wants to see, no matter what.”

  He’d seen his daughter receive Dave at her home a number of times, he said, and didn’t like the look of the guy from the beginning. “He even wore his wedding ring,” he said. “Didn’t even try to pretend.”

  Matthew also noted that Joyce was out of the house more often after Dave left. She had taken drives with Matthew in the car (of course, Joyce had no knowledge of her father’s presence), and he thought she’d actually driven to a house he came to believe was Dave and Helen Boffice’s home. She’d just sit there and watch the place, he said, much as I had watched Dave drive to his various lunchtime rendezvous. She’d never gotten out of the car to so much as ring the doorbell.

  But as for the day Joyce died, Matthew had no knowledge of her comings and goings. His sojourn to the beach—something he did infrequently, he said—had kept him from his daughter’s last moments, and he actually choked up when he spoke of it.

  “Maybe I could have done something,” he said. “Cut the cord down or something. If I’d been there . . .”

  “There was no way you could have known,” I told him. “Just let me know if you hear from your daughter at all. If she becomes, you know . . . like you, she’ll have very good information to share.”

  Paul nodded in approval and Matthew, looking determined, went on his way, although I had no idea as to where he’d go. Ghosts have a lot of time on their hands, and while some (like Paul) are tied to specific locations, many (like Maxie) have very little limitation in terms of territory. Matthew could literally be anywhere.