An Open Spook (A Haunted Guesthouse Mystery) (4 page)

“What else?” Paul asked.

Maxine opened her eyes. “His left arm was stretched out in front of him, but it was dark. I couldn’t see if he had something in his hand, or anything.”

Paul’s jaw moved back and forth. “Good. Nice work, Maxie.”

“Oh, but that’s not the weird part,” Maxine offered.

Alison, eyebrow cocked and lips twisted, said, “Okay, Maxie. What’s the weird part?”

“I saw someone like us—a woman—making her way out of the room and through the wall to the outside,” Maxine grinned. She loves knowing something others don’t.

Melissa’s eyes widened. “Another ghost?”

“It’s all speculation,” Paul said. “Maxie saw a ghost in Mac’s room, but she didn’t see the ghost do anything, and didn’t really get a good look, other than to say it was female. We don’t know anything yet.”

After some discussion about Maxine’s description of the scene in Mac’s room, Paul had suggested he and Maxine search the house for unknown ghosts, but they found no one at all, not even Sergeant Elliot. Now, in the den as the fire started to die down, he was cautioning us not to jump to conclusions.

“We have no evidence,” he went on. “In fact, we don’t even know for sure that anything happened other than a person like Maxie and me was passing by just when Mac happened to fall out of bed. For all we know, he does that twice a week.”

“Yeah, but isn’t it a big coincidence?” Melissa asked. “Aren’t you always saying we shouldn’t trust coincidences in an investigation?” She’s so grown-up.

“I’m not saying we should trust it, and I’m not saying the spirit in the room didn’t do something to your guest, Alison. What I’m saying is we don’t know what happened yet.”

There was little that could be done before morning. Without electricity, Maxine could not do any Internet research; even if the battery on the somewhat outdated laptop could hold out for more than a few minutes—and Alison assured me it wouldn’t—there was no working Internet connection in the house. We’d have to venture outside to find one, and the radio’s news reports grew more and more dire as the night went on. Alison had been right—we’d stay inside for the duration.

We could hear the wind howling outside. Maxine reported on the damage she’d seen, which in this area seemed to be mostly downed branches, but large ones. “It’s pretty bad. I couldn’t see any lights on for miles around, no streetlights, no traffic lights, no neon signs, nothing. Maybe you should have evacuated.”

“There was no evacuation order, or I would have,” Alison said. “You could see all that from the roof?”

Maxine shook her head. “The sign on top of the Dunkin’ Donuts on Route 35.”

“We can’t expect power to come on too soon. What can we do now, Paul?” Alison asked. I think she was trying to change the subject, because Melissa looked just a little scared, and Alison hates frightening her daughter.

“Sleep,” the ghostly investigator suggested. “It’s not going to do you much good to sit up tonight, and we can’t do any searching or research until tomorrow. Let me know if you see Maxie’s female ghost.”

“I don’t want to go upstairs with the fire still burning,” my daughter said.

“I’ll take care of it,” I told her. “I don’t feel like sleeping just yet. You and Melissa go on up.” I wasn’t very sleepy; I’ve always been a little antsy during thunderstorms, and even though there was no thunder tonight, this had the same dangerous feel to it. Maybe more dangerous.

Alison considered. “You want to spend the night in my room, Liss?” she asked.

“I’m not a four-year-old anymore,” Melissa protested, her voice a little shaky, betraying her true feelings.

“Of course you’re not, but I’m cold. I’ll bring the heater down from your room and we can both be warm.”

It was Melissa’s turn to consider for a moment. “Okay,” she said. Alison put an arm around her daughter and was even gracious enough not to give me a knowing look as she led Melissa upstairs.

Once they were out of earshot, I crossed my arms and pulled the blanket closer around my shoulders; the wool was scratchy, but I like it that way. “Okay, Paul,” I said. “Melissa’s gone. Now tell me what you
really
think is going on.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “We have a long list of things we don’t know, and a very short list of things we can be sure about.”

“We don’t know
anything
,”
Maxine interjected. I knew Paul was just warming up so I’d stayed silent, but Maxine’s not always adept at picking up on signals from other people. Patience is not her strongest suit. “We can’t even be sure what Sergeant Elliot really wants,” she continued.

“What reason would he have to lie?” I asked. “We’re not going to stop looking for the bracelet if it’s that important to him. Why not just say what he means?” I confess, I don’t always understand what makes people lie. I’m sure there’s a reason Alison won’t tell people besides the family and her Senior Plus guests that she can see ghosts, but I’ve never felt embarrassed about my gift and will mention it to anyone who asks.

“I’m not sure this is all about the bracelet,” Paul said. “Maybe he wants us to search the house in some way that he can’t, or that he wouldn’t think to do. He wants us to find
something
.”

“Nobody goes this nuts over some little strip of metal that isn’t worth five dollars,” Maxie said, as if it were obvious. “What’s important is he wants out of this type of existence. He thinks somehow we can help him do it.”

I wished my husband Jack were there. Jack would have had a good idea of how to cut through the fog and understand what was important. It was a specialty of his. I wondered what he would say about Sergeant Elliot’s true motivations. So I imagined his reply, “This man’s name is on the bracelet, and he needs it to achieve some kind of peace. That could make sense. What doesn’t add up is that he’s so set on one being here in the house. What about all the others? Why is this particular one so important?”

That made sense. Jack was so helpful, even when he wasn’t there. “The only tool we have that’s still working is you, Paul,” I said. “Maybe you’d better try and locate Sergeant Elliot.”

Paul looked resigned to his task and nodded. “I’ll be back,” he said. Before he left, I asked him to get in touch with Jack and let him know I was all right. He agreed and dropped through the floor to the basement, one of his favorite hiding places.

“If you don’t mind me leaving you alone, I’m going back out to watch the storm,” Maxine said from the ceiling. “It’s pretty cool, when you can’t get wet.” I waved her off, saying it was fine and she, too, vanished.

I tried to resist the temptation to turn on the radio—who knew when we’d be able to get more batteries?—but I checked in about once an hour.

The reports got progressively worse, and at about two in the morning, the radio station we’d been tuned to lost its power, and static replaced the reports. It took me ten minutes to find another news outlet that was still broadcasting. Reports of downed wires and tree limbs abounded, hundreds of thousands were, like us, without electricity, and flooding was already overtaking a good part of the Jersey Shore. We hadn’t gotten any water in the house yet, but that didn’t mean we wouldn’t. And even if the house itself remained unscathed, the area was taking a beating—I wasn’t sure when Alison might be able to expect vacationing guests to begin booking visits again.

At about five, I was sprawled on the sofa. The howling winds outside were a constant reminder of the huge storm bearing down on the shore, and the knowledge that the power might not come back for days was unsettling. What about the food I had in the freezer back at my house? Was the power on there?

I was tired but felt like I had to stay awake through the storm, like I was protecting the house for Alison and Melissa. I don’t know what I thought I’d be able to do if an emergency arose, but it seemed like the thing to do. I’d closed the flue on the chimney hours before.

Paul rose up from the basement, looking like a man who’d just been awakened from a deep sleep—no, a coma. His eyes weren’t focusing and his hair was tousled. He blinked frequently. And his voice was raspy.

“I’ve been trying to contact Sergeant Elliot,” he explained. “For that matter, I’ve been trying to contact anyone who knew him.”

“No luck?” I asked.

Paul tilted his head to indicate
Well, maybe
. “I got a message from someone who was in Robert’s platoon in Vietnam. He said the soldiers there knew about the POW bracelets, but couldn’t decide if it was a tribute to the missing soldiers or a protest to the war. They didn’t care much for protestors.”

“And you couldn’t find Robert, either? Find out why he left so abruptly?”

It seemed to work. Paul’s expression changed to one of concentration and he looked directly at me. “That’s the strange part,” he said, as if the rest of this business had simply been routine. “He sent me back a message that he’s in the area, but doesn’t want to come here and discuss this matter just now.”

“Why?” I asked.

“That is the curious part,” Paul said. “Why did he seem so intent on locating the bracelet just a few hours ago, and now he won’t find the time to talk about it?”

“What about Maxie’s phantom ghost?” I asked.

Paul looked coy. “I have a theory, but it is unsupported by the facts as we know them,” he said.

Just then, a huge crash came from behind the house, shaking us and making a terrible noise that caused everyone, especially those not especially well anchored to the floor, jump.

I looked up at Paul. “Find Maxine,” I said, my voice a little raspy. He was gone in a second.

Before he could return, and before I could get to the back door to take a look, Alison and Melissa appeared at the top of the stairs. “Did you hear that?” Alison asked. It seemed a silly question; the noise was enough to wake . . . Paul and Maxine, if I had stopped to think about it. But they seemed quite awake to me.

“Paul went outside to look,” I told her. “There’s no need for anybody else to follow him.” I could see she was already looking toward the back door. “Did you check on Mac?”

“His room looked okay. I didn’t want to wake him up if that noise didn’t.”

“I’m sure he’s okay,” I said. “It didn’t sound like anything hit the house.”

Paul and Maxine—who was now wearing a black T-shirt with the slogan “Well, Blow Me Down” emblazoned on the front—emerged through the boarded-up French doors to the backyard. “It’s not serious,” Paul said once they were in the room. “A very large tree limb came down and landed in your backyard. It glanced off the shed, but it didn’t do any significant damage. It’ll just take some work with a chain saw once the storm has passed.”

Alison looked relieved, but didn’t say anything because we all heard a noise at the entrance to the den. Mac, in a terry-cloth robe over a T-shirt with a picture of Jimi Hendrix on it, was coming in from his room. He wore white socks on his skinny ankles, highly visible in the remaining candlelight. He looked like either Cheech or Chong; I can never remember which is which.

And what was weirdest of all: He was carrying the measuring cup I’d been looking for before dinner.

“Is everything okay?” he asked Alison when he reached the landing. “I heard a really loud noise.”

“Everything’s okay, Mac,” she said in what Melissa calls her “hostess voice.” “There’s no damage. Go ahead back to bed.”

“It’s almost six,” he answered. “I might as well stay up.” He started to walk toward us.

“What’s that in your hand?” I asked him, knowing full well what it was.

Mac looked down at his right hand, almost as if he’d forgotten it was there. “Oh yeah,” he said. “I found this next to my bed. Any idea what it was doing there?”

I took the cup from him. It was empty. “None at all,” I answered.

“And my hand smells like chicken,” he added. “Far out, huh? Made me hungry.” He laughed to himself.

“Maybe we should get some breakfast together,” I said to Alison. “The stove is gas, so there’s no reason we can’t cook, anyway. Maybe we could make a little something more than just coffee. Would you like some breakfast, Mac?”

The guest looked surprised. “I thought food wasn’t included.”

Alison smiled. “We make exceptions for hurricanes,” she said.

“Well, if it’s not too much trouble,” Mac answered.

“You sure it’s safe?” Maxine asked. “I’ve seen how you cook.” Alison’s mouth twitched, but she resisted the urge to glare in Maxine’s direction.

“I can help,” I volunteered.

Mac had reached the sofa and I stood up to start toward the kitchen. “I’ll do it, Mom,” Alison said with a tiny amount of edge in her voice. She’s not interested enough to be a great cook, but she does know how to brew coffee and can make some breakfasts. Although without a toaster to make frozen waffles, I wasn’t sure what else she could produce, but I decided to let her be the innkeeper and nodded.

But Alison stopped halfway to the kitchen when she heard me gasp, and Melissa’s eyes were fixed at the same spot that had caught my eye a moment ago—the glint of light from Mac’s arm.

He was wearing a POW bracelet.

Everyone—living and dead—in the room stopped in their tracks, not that the ghosts really have tracks. Everyone, that is, except Mac, who was auditioning comfortable places to sit. He settled on the easy chair facing the sofa.

“Is that what I think it is?” Paul asked. I nodded, and so did Alison. His right hand went immediately to his goatee.

Mac barely had a chance to settle into the easy chair and look up when Melissa saved us. Before he could notice he was the center of attention, she cleared her throat and said, “That’s a really cool bracelet you’re wearing, Mac. May I see it?”

Alison’s guest, who was being careful to keep his long robe closed all the way to his white socks, seemed puzzled by the question. “Bracelet?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” Melissa answered, pointing at Mac’s left forearm. Alison looked concerned, and Maxine moved closer to Melissa, just in case. She’s very protective.

He looked at it as if it were someone else’s. “Oh!” he said. “Sure, of course. I’d forgotten.” He leaned forward as much as he could and held out his wrist. “It’s called a POW bracelet,” he answered. “Do you know what that means?”

Melissa stole a quick glance at her mother, and Alison shook her head. “No, sir,” she told Mac. “What is it?”

The older gentleman explained, as I had, the origins of the bracelet. “I’ve had it for at least forty years, I guess,” he said, then looked at Melissa as if he’d forgotten she was there. “I’ve never taken it off in all that time. And it’s not just nostalgia.” He looked at Melissa. “Do you know what that means? ‘Nostalgia’?”

Melissa didn’t look for signals from Alison that time and nodded. “It means thinking about something that happened in the past and how you miss that time,” she said.

“That’s very good,” Mac responded. “You’re a smart girl.”

Well, that was obvious, of course. But I held my breath a bit when my granddaughter pushed the question a little further, even as Paul hovered down to look more closely at Mac’s face. Paul says facial expression is important when interviewing subjects. “You’re not thinking about a war, are you, Mac? That’s not the kind of time you’d have nostalgia for, is it?”

Alison looked a little concerned, and Paul said, “Easy, Melissa,” but Mac just smiled.

“No, you’re right,” he answered. “A war is a very bad thing, and that’s why I spent years protesting it. I burned my draft card and refused to go fight a war I thought was immoral. Spent a few nights in jail for what they called illegal assembly and incitement to riot.” He seemed proud of that.

“Did you go to Canada?” I asked, trying to buy time for Paul and Alison to think. “A lot of the war protestors ended up there to avoid being drafted.”

Mac smiled strangely, like he was remembering something both funny and sad at the same time. “No. The fact is, I had a high draft lottery number, and they never actually called me up. The whole thing was crazy; just a product of the military industrial complex.” I knew that was true of my husband, Jack, too—the Selective Service System had set up a “lottery” based on birth date, and if you got a high number, you probably weren’t going to get drafted. He’d been lucky.

Paul, Alison and I all looked at one another. There
had
to be a connection to Sergeant Elliot! But how to ask Mac?

But then the guest looked a little concerned, and made eye contact with Alison. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Should I be more careful?” he asked, and his eyes darted toward Melissa.

“Don’t worry about it. We’re open to all points of view here,” Alison answered, then looked at me. “Mom, I just realized the drip coffeemaker won’t be working and I’ll have to make coffee on the stove. Could you come into the kitchen and help me with that?”

“Of course.” I stood and followed her into the kitchen, carrying a lit candle. I knew this was a ploy to get me away so we could talk about what was going on.

Once inside the kitchen, though, Alison looked desperately at me. “How do you make coffee on the stove?” she asked.

It was worse than I thought. My daughter actually didn’t know how to boil water. “When the power comes back on, I’m giving you cooking lessons,” I told her.

“Not now, Mom . . .”

“No, when the power comes back on. You need to learn.” I knew what she meant, but I wanted her to know I was serious.

“Teach Liss, not me. There’s still hope for her.”

I filled a teapot with water and put it on the stove, which I lit with a match from the top drawer next to the sink. “I’m teaching both of you,” I said firmly. Then I told her about the measuring cup, but neither of us could come up with a plausible explanation for its migration to Mac’s room. “We’ll ask Paul when we can,” I said.

“What do you think the POW bracelet on Mac means?” I asked Alison just as Maxine was emerging through the wall from the den.

“No clue,” Alison said. “That’s Paul’s department.”

“Did anybody get a close look at the POW bracelet on Mac’s wrist?” I asked Maxine. “Whose name is on it? Was it Sergeant Elliot’s?”

“I don’t think Melissa was able to see it, or at least she hasn’t said so yet,” Maxine reported. “And he’s been moving his hand around too much for me to see. I can ask Paul if you want.” Maxine is always so eager to help; it’s a wonder that Alison sometimes says she’s difficult.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Alison said. “We need to get back in touch with the sergeant.”

Alison got four mugs out from the cabinet, and I got some instant coffee from the pantry section next to the refrigerator. “Four mugs?” I asked.

“Liss likes coffee now,” Alison said. I thought she was a little young, but Alison treats Melissa like an adult, and Melissa acts like one, so I suppose I can’t argue with how that girl is growing up.

The wind was still howling around the house, and we could hear the rain pelting the roof and the boarded-up windows. Alison had checked three times for water in the basement; she had one small gas-powered generator to run the sump pump if necessary, but so far it had not been needed. “Why would Sergeant Elliot suddenly need that bracelet? Why wouldn’t he answer when Paul tried to Ghostmail him?” Alison continued.

“Ghostmail?” I asked.

“I’m trying out a new catchphrase.”

“Fail,” Maxine sang as she disappeared back through the kitchen wall. Alison looked up at the spot, shook her head and went to fill the cups with hot water from the teapot.

• • •

“Fail?” I asked.

“Okay, maybe we didn’t
fail
,” Marilyn Beechman said. “But you certainly can’t say we succeeded in Vietnam.”

The television behind her in my studio apartment showed helicopters taking the last American troops out of the war. I had thought it would be a time for celebration, particularly among those of us who had opposed United States involvement, so I’d called Marilyn, now working for a local law firm. She’d come over after work for a glass of wine.

“I’m not talking about the country succeeding,” I said. “I’m talking about
us
. We protested to the point that the government had to end the war. Isn’t that success? I can take off this bracelet now, can’t I?” I reached for the POW bracelet, a little worse for wear, that had rarely been separated from my wrist for three years now.

Marilyn reached over and grabbed my hand gently. “No, you can’t,” she said. “Colonel Mason is still missing. You can’t take it off until he’s accounted for.”

I stopped looking for the corkscrew and turned to look at her. “But he might
never
be accounted for,” I said. “I mean, I’ve gotten used to wearing the thing, but I don’t want it to be on my arm forever.”

“Oh, they’ll eventually account for everybody,” Marilyn assured me. “It’s just going to take a while for them to figure it all out. They always do.”

“Oh yeah? What about the tomb of the unknown soldier?”

Marilyn scowled at me. “You have a bond with Colonel Mason,” she said, pointing at my wrist. “Everybody who got his bracelet does. You took him on and swore he wouldn’t be forgotten. It’s your responsibility to keep that bond, through that bracelet, until he’s found or declared dead, so he can rest in peace. That’s the deal. You knew it when you put the bracelet on your wrist.”

“
You
put the bracelet on my wrist, and I never swore anything,” I pointed out. But I already saw the logic in her argument. I
had
sort of made a promise, even if I hadn’t realized all the implications at the time. And I was already seeing the ghosts of our soldiers—the ones whose bodies had been discovered and flown home—hovering almost everywhere I went. Some of them had been home long enough to change out of their uniforms, having realized they were no longer bound to duty.

There was one outside the apartment as we spoke, circling a streetlamp at about seven feet off the ground. He was still in uniform and seemed lost. I guess, when the only thing you can think to do is circle a streetlamp, you probably don’t have much on your plate. I felt bad for him and would have called out through the window if Marilyn hadn’t been here. No one except my family knew about my gift. In those days, I thought I had to keep it a secret. As you age, you realize that what other people think doesn’t matter.

“You keep that thing on, young lady,” Marilyn reprimanded me. “Don’t worry. It won’t be long.”

• • •

“I got it at Berkley in 1971,” Mac was saying as we sipped the instant coffee Alison had made. It was a trifle on the weak side, but I’m sure it was hard for her to read the proportions on the jar with this lighting. “The bracelet was a way of protesting the war and showing solidarity with the poor guys—and believe me, the rich never went—who were taken up in the war.”

The wind wasn’t whipping quite as noisily around the house anymore, and the gaps between boards on the windows indicated the sun had come up, although it was hardly shining brightly through all the clouds.

There wasn’t any point in being coy. So I simply asked Mac whose name was on his POW bracelet.

He didn’t have to look to answer. “Sergeant Robert Elliot,” he reported. “Lost in Thua Thien-Hue Province, South Vietnam, on November 5, 1970.”