Be My Ghost

by Carol J. Perry

  Maureen sat in a beige chair. “Well, you guys,” she said, “I don’t know exactly what to think about all that.” She waved toward the still-open bedroom door. “But the man says he’s just collecting evidence. The medicine belonged to Penelope. I’m sure her name is on the bottle. It has nothing to do with me, right?”

  The animals watched. She answered her own question. “Right. Now I need to get back to my office and figure out how to keep this place afloat. Want to come with me, Finn?”

  Without his leash Finn trotted happily along as once again Maureen descended the stairs to the second floor and unlocked the door to suite twenty-seven. The door to the bedroom was open and she could see the plastic boxes of decorations neatly lined up in a row. She’d get to them soon. Halloween was just around the corner. She closed the bedroom door and concentrated on business. For now, generating enough cash to get through the week without running up any more unnecessary charges was more important than pumpkins and black cats. She pulled open the drawer and returned the sheaf of papers to her desktop.

  She stared at the figures the lawyer had shared. She thought of the brown envelope full of offers for the Haven House Inn, then discounted that possibility. She double-checked her own figures. She knew she’d need some long-range plans to get the place on a profitable basis, but there wasn’t time for long-range planning. What could she do with the place right now? She’d already decided to sell as much of the contents of the hoard in the storage locker as possible. That could be done fairly soon. What about all the vehicles she apparently owned—or owed money on? Did the payroll make any sense? What about the dining room? With the quality of the food she’d experienced so far, the tables should be full for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Why weren’t they?

  The pile of menus was still on the corner of her desk where she’d tossed them earlier. She reached for the plastic-covered one. “I haven’t read to you for a while, have I, Finn? Want to hear about food?” At the word “food” the golden perked up his ears, sat expectantly, watching his mistress’s face.

  In the bright light from the desk lamp she could tell that the menu had seen better days. The edges were curled up and it appeared to have coffee stains on it. Maybe it hadn’t looked so bad in the dimly lit room with its dark bark-cloth draperies, but this was unacceptable. Even the paper menus had clearly been used more than once. She studied the contents of the plastic-covered one. It had breakfast, lunch, dinner, desserts, and beverages listed. It seemed pretty basic. She began to recite aloud, “ ‘Cereal, muffins, omelettes, bacon, and sausages for breakfast,’ ” she said. “ ‘Hamburgers, hot dogs, and a few sandwiches and a house salad for lunch.’ Not too exciting so far, huh?”

  “Woof,” Finn said. Maureen read on: “ ‘For dinner, we have steaks, grilled or fried, native fish, grilled or fried, chicken, grilled or fried, assorted vegetables, and potatoes, baked or fried.’ ” She shook her head. “Big whoop. Here’re the appetizers. Shrimp cocktail, soup du jour, or Caesar salad. Pretty boring, huh? Even at these low prices. How about desserts? Key lime pie, hot fudge sundae, layer cake. Not too bad. But they could be a lot better.”

  “Woof,” Finn agreed. How old were these menus anyway? she wondered. The specials on the paper menus sounded much more appealing and the prices made more sense. She realized that she’d only eaten the specials herself—and they’d all been prepared by bartender Ted.

  “I’m going to dip into my five-thousand-dollar stash and spend it on the dining room,” she told the dog. “New, light-colored curtains, some beach décor on the walls, and revamped menus—and I’m going to start tomorrow.”

  Decision made, she felt better and sat back in her chair, smiling. A slight sound from the next room brought a frown. A branch scratching on a window? A scurrying mouse? It was an old building after all, but Bogie and Bacall should have long since attended to any rodent problem. Again, the sound. She stood, walked to the bedroom door, put her ear against an upper panel. Nothing.

  Finn watched from beside the desk as she turned the glass knob, pushed the door open, and reached for the light switch. A low-watt ceiling fixture in the center of the room provided pale illumination. She made a quick mental note: Replace all the old bulbs with LED soft light ones; save energy and money. She stepped into the room, squinting in the dimness, and walked around the row of plastic boxes. The closet door was slightly ajar. She pushed it closed, heard the latch click. Maybe George had opened it for some reason. Maureen was sure she’d closed it earlier.

  She stood still for a moment beside the boxes, listening. Finn had still not approached the room. She heard herself breathing, even imagined she heard her own heart beating. It was absolutely quiet at that moment in suite twenty-seven. She looked down at the neat row of plastic boxes, brightened a bit by the light spilling from her office.

  There was the slightest dent in the cover of the last box. Almost as if something had pressed on it. Almost as if someone had sat on it.

  Had John Smith mistaken the row of boxes for a bed?

  She whirled, almost leaped across the marble doorsill into the office, slamming the bedroom door behind her, trying to shake the bad thought away. Finn jumped at the sound and ducked under the kneehole of the desk.

  She sat in the desk chair, reached down, and patted the dog. Nonsense, she told herself. Take deep breaths. Be logical. George had those boxes piled up in the truck, and again on the luggage carrier. There are any number of ways he might have dented one. She glanced again toward the closed bedroom, picked up her papers and notepad, turned off the desk lamp, and with Finn trotting ahead of her pulled the door to suite twenty-seven open, stepped out into the corridor, closed it softly, and locked it.

  Maureen and Finn rode the elevator up to her suite, looking forward to the company of the cats—maybe even Lorna Dubois. “This place is getting to me,” Maureen muttered as she stepped out onto the carpeted hall. “It’ll be good for me to get started on the revamping of the dining room—even if Queen Elizabeth doesn’t approve of my ideas.”

  Opening her door, she was happy to see Bogie and Bacall curled up together on the couch. Finn, with a gentle “woof” and with his entire backside wagging, came forward to offer the cats his enthusiastic greeting. The cats sat, apparently declining to participate in such a display of emotion, but not leaving the scene either.

  “Okay, guys,” she said, “We’ve got a lot of work to do. We have to decorate this whole place for Halloween without spending any money, then we have to figure out how to get rid of a warehouse full of junk at a profit, and next, we dip into my five thousand bucks to lighten up the dining room décor and at the same time I’ll redesign those tatty old menus.”

  The cats seemed to be listening. She continued. “Don’t breathe a word of this to anybody.” She leaned toward the animals and whispered, “I think maybe the ghost of suite twenty-seven may have paid me a visit tonight.”

  “No kidding?” The voice came from a beige chair where Lorna Dubois, wearing Maureen’s red satin pajamas, which now appeared to be black and white, popped into view.

  “Don’t do that!” Maureen, one hand at her throat, commanded.

  “Do what?”

  “Appear out of nowhere like that. It’s enough to give a person a heart attack.”

  “Sorry,” Lorna said. “Penelope used to say the same thing. Only she really had a bad heart. She gave me a little bell to ring whenever I was going to appear. It’s around here somewhere. I just tapped it and it rang.”

  “The push bell in the lobby,” Maureen said. “Elizabeth must have grabbed it. I’ll get you a new one.”

  Lorna leaned forward. “So you saw John Smith? What does he look like?”

  “I didn’t see him—or anybody,” Maureen insisted. “It was just something creepy happened. It’s probably nothing. Forget about it.”

  “Tell me everything.” Lorna clapped her hands together, widened her eyes—probably, Maureen thought, a move she’d done hundreds of times in all those B movies s
he’d talked about.

  “Well, the closet door was open a crack.” Maureen sat in the other beige chair. “I’m pretty sure I didn’t leave it that way.”

  “Oh, pooh. That’s nothing. One of the cleaning girls could have done it.” Lorna waved a dismissive hand. “There must have been more. Come on. Give. I won’t tell a soul.” She crossed her heart.

  “Well, all right.” Barely believing that she was actually having a conversation with a ghost—about another ghost—Maureen began. She described the wide plastic bins filled with decorations, and how George had arranged them in a tight row in the formerly empty bedroom. “After I closed that closet door, I looked at the boxes. The one at the end of the row looked like it had a kind of dent in it.” She paused, took a deep breath. “Almost as if someone—something—had sat on it.”

  Lorna nodded, platinum waves curving gracefully around the perfect oval face. “You’re thinking maybe those boxes, in the dark, could have looked sort of like a bed to—um—to someone?”

  “Yeah. What do you think? Am I nuts? I mean, what if suite twenty-seven—my office—really is haunted?”

  “Of course it’s haunted, you big silly. People have been reporting seeing John Smith in there for years. Do you think they’re all nuts?” She put both fists under her chin and pursed rosebud lips—another adorable, practiced, film-starlet move no doubt—and continued. “No. He’s really there and he’s really scary. The question is, why does he haunt that particular room in this particular inn in Haven when nobody knows how he died, where he died, or why he died?”

  Chapter 20

  Even after the cats had climbed to their tower sleeping quarters, Finn had curled up at the foot of the Heywood-Wakefield bed, and satin-pajama-clad Lorna Dubois had popped out of sight, sleep did not come easily to Maureen Doherty. Thoughts streamed and drifted and sometimes raced through her mind. Those brown medicine bottles—they had, without a doubt, been found in her medicine cabinet. That dismal financial report from Attorney Jackson . . . was certainly her responsibility. Could she—should she?—attempt to save the place or sell it to the highest bidder and go back to Massachusetts? Was her inherited inn, and quite possibly her entire new hometown of Haven, Florida, some sort of ghost portal? Spirit shuttle? Apparition passageway?

  There were no ready answers. She slid into a fitful slumber where a grinning Zoltar pounded the keys of a player piano while Ted the bartender piled pancakes into a bowl marked BOGIE. When she awoke, it was still dark outside. Five a.m. Maureen’s thinking process remained fuzzy, questions still unanswered, unlikely happenings still unexplained.

  She padded to the bathroom, splashed cold water onto her face, peered into the mirror, and addressed her reflected image. “Come on. Wake up! We have things to do.”

  A nice brisk run on the beach will get my mind right, she decided. Within minutes she’d dressed in denim cutoffs and the old Red Sox T-shirt, pulled on well-broken-in running shoes and, without waking the sleeping Finn, hurried downstairs and slipped out the side door into the cool, early Florida morning.

  A faint pinkish glow in the eastern sky foretold a pretty sunrise. The streetlamps were still on, the boulevard deserted, shrill cries of ravenous seagulls piercing the stillness. The tide was low. Maureen made her way onto the hard-packed sand at the edge of the gulf and headed toward the Long Pier in the distance.

  The run had the desired effect. Feet pounding on the sand, lungs bursting with exertion, she paused, leading forward, hands braced against thighs, waiting for her heart rate to slow, her breathing to resume normal rhythm. Then, wide awake, cobwebs cleared away, she turned, facing back toward the casino building, the brightening sky revealing another runner moving in her direction. She’d slowed to a jog, raising one arm in friendly greeting, realizing that she was alone on a darkened beach, not far from where there’d been a murder—still unsolved—and she had no idea who the man running toward her was, or what he might have in mind. She made a mental note to bring Finn along next time. The man came closer. “Hi, Ted!” she called.

  “Hi, Ms. Doherty.” He gave a salute. “Nice morning.” She smiled, waved, nodded her agreement about the weather, and the two passed each other, but not before she’d noted that the bartender looked very good in shorts and T-shirt.

  She slowed her pace to a walk as the casino building came into sight. Thoughts had become more orderly. The idea of a ghostly bottom denting a plastic box was the first to be cast aside. The very real problem of the inn’s looming financial crisis was not to be so easily dismissed. Her earlier fund-raising concepts had some merit. She was quite sure about that. They needed to be put into order, then put into practice. Getting rid of Penelope’s hoard would take some time. Someone, probably an expert, had to separate the junk from the possibly valuable. That would cost money at the outset. Cutting costs now was more to the point. That meant a serious sit-down with Elizabeth. The carefree tossing around of what was left of Penelope Josephine Gray’s fortune had to stop—and it had to stop immediately.

  The streetlamps were still lighted, and neon OPEN signs already glowed in some of the shop windows when Maureen walked toward the inn. I can do this, she told herself. I can march right up to Queen Elizabeth and tell her that things around here have to change. That I’m in charge now.

  She ran up the front steps. There were a few folks in the porch rockers already, some with coffee cups. “Morning,” she said, hurrying past them, anxious to begin this new day, to move forward with her pledge to save the Haven House Inn.

  Inside, she sniffed the good breakfast smells of coffee and bacon issuing from the dining room. She knew Ted was on the beach, so someone else must be cooking. There was no one behind the registration desk. Just as well Elizabeth isn’t here, she thought. I need a shower and a change of clothes before I confront her. She hurried up the stairs to the third floor and was greeted by Finn and the cats as soon as she opened the door. “Is everybody hungry?” she asked.

  “Woof,” Finn said, and the cats made mewling little starving kitten noises.

  “Oh, come on. It’s not that bad,” she said, moving past them to the kitchen. “Now, how do I keep you all from eating each other’s food?”

  Maureen filled Bogie’s and Bacall’s dishes first, put them on a place mat on the floor, and instructed Finn in a stern tone to “Stay.” That worked. Now to keep the cats from sampling Finn’s favorite Nature’s Recipe food. She put a small amount into his bowl. The cats each walked over, took a whiff, and turned away. Crisis momentarily averted.

  “Okay, you guys, I’m hungry too,” she announced. “Enjoy your breakfasts. I’m going to shower and change and get something to eat. Then I have a really busy day ahead of me. Actually, many busy days ahead of me.”

  The run and her recent realization of exactly how much needed to be done in order to keep the Haven House Inn alive had resulted in a laser-like focus on the immediate problems she faced. The new clarity brought a welcome, though still-alarming, prospect. She showered, dressed in madras plaid Bermudas and white linen shirt. Casual, but conservative, she told herself. Just businesslike enough for Haven. Makeup was light, hair neatly brushed away from her face.

  “Okay, you guys, wish me luck,” Maureen instructed the animals. She tucked the papers and notepad into the fine leather briefcase she’d used back when she was “buyer of the year,” left the suite, locked the door, and literally marched toward the elevator.

  Elizabeth was at her post behind the registration desk. “Good morning, Elizabeth,” Maureen said. “I’ve been going over some figures and we need to talk.”

  “Yes, well, between breakfast and the desk, I guess you can see I’m busy.” Elizabeth’s tone was firm. “I have to be two places at once, you know.”

  Maureen glanced around the reception area. It was empty. “Excuse me,” she said, and pushed open the plantation doors to the dining room. The long-table buffet arrangement was in place with a beaming Herbie—in chef’s hat—providing service to the short line of
diners. Waitress Shelly stood by, along with a young man wielding a coffeepot. “Breakfast seems to be going smoothly. Perhaps Shelly can watch the desk and we can talk in your office.”

  “Both the dining room and the lobby are my responsibility, you know,” Elizabeth said, not moving from behind the desk, narrowing her eyes, watching Maureen.

  “I understand.” Maureen returned the woman’s gaze and spoke softly. “But I’m sure Shelly can handle it for now. Shall I speak to her, or would you prefer to?”

  Elizabeth blinked first. “I’ll tell her.” The woman turned, pushed the doors open. “Shelly! Come out here and take over the desk for a few minutes. Bring the menus.”

  Maureen was quite sure this was going to take more than a few minutes but didn’t say so.

  “We’ll be in my office,” Elizabeth told the waitress, who looked perfectly at ease with the situation. “If you have any trouble, just knock on the door. I’ll come right out and handle it.”

  “Thank you, Shelly.” Maureen followed Elizabeth into the cheerful yellow and white room, placing the briefcase beside a chair, watching the woman seat herself behind the desk.

  “Well, what is it?” Elizabeth’s self-confident attitude was back. “I need to get back to the dining room in case of a rush.”

  “I’m sure the breakfast staff can handle it.” Maureen picked up the briefcase, opening it on her lap. “You realize, don’t you, that Haven House Inn can’t survive much longer under the current system of management?”

  “Are you insinuating that I’m not doing my job?” Elizabeth, scowling, raised her voice.

  “I’m not insinuating anything.” Maureen pulled the spreadsheet from the briefcase, placing it on the desk. “I’m pointing out that a system that may have been acceptable in the past isn’t working anymore.” She pointed to the bottom of the page. “We’re very nearly out of money. How did you plan to keep operating?”