Ghost in the Wind

Praise for the National Bestselling Haunted Guesthouse Mysteries

“Wonderful . . . A laugh-out-loud, fast-paced and charming tale.”

—Kate Carlisle,
New York Times
bestselling author of the Bibliophile Mysteries

“Fans of Charlaine Harris and Sarah Graves will relish this original, laugh-laden paranormal mystery featuring reluctant ghost whisperer Alison Kerby, a Topper for the twenty-first century.”

—Julia Spencer-Fleming,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Through the Evil Days

“A couple of demanding ghosts, a quick-witted heroine, a creaky old house and a delightful cast of characters . . . What a fun and enjoyable story!”

—Leann Sweeney,
New York Times
bestselling author of the Cats in Trouble Mysteries

“A standout series.”

—The Mystery Reader

“When combined with the author's trademark humor and keen writing, readers will be wishing that the novel and the series never end.”

—Kings River Life Magazine

“A delightful ride . . . Funny, charming and thoroughly enjoyable.”

—Spinetingler Magazine

“A cocktail of haunted humor and a killer mystery . . . Even the ghosts and their former lives are written to perfection.”

—Fresh Fiction

“You won't want to miss this ghostly cozy mystery, full of enough wit, charm and supernatural hijinks to keep you turning the pages well past midnight.”

—MyShelf.com

Berkley Prime Crime titles by E. J. Copperman

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEED

AN UNINVITED GHOST

OLD HAUNTS

CHANCE OF A GHOST

THE THRILL OF THE HAUNT

INSPECTOR SPECTER

GHOST IN THE WIND

Specials

A WILD GHOST CHASE

AN OPEN SPOOK

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

GHOST IN THE WIND

A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author.

Copyright © 2015 by Jeffrey Cohen.

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME design are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

For more information, visit
penguin.com
.

eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-63466-0

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / December 2015

Cover illustration by Dominick Finelle.

Cover design by Judith Lagerman.

Photography: flock of birds © Alexuss K / Shutterstock; painted background © istockphoto / Thinkstock.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

For John, Paul, George and Ringo.
Maybe especially Ringo.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This is the seventh Haunted Guesthouse novel. Just typing that sort of amazes me. The reception to these books has been utterly astonishing to their author, and I can never repay the trust some people—mostly you readers—have shown in me.

The first among those readers is Shannon Jamieson Vazquez, the stalwart and indispensable editor of the Haunted Guesthouse series, without whom you would be reading someone else's book right now. Shannon saw the potential in the series at its idea phase and has shaped everything you've read in it up to this very moment. She'll probably have a few changes to suggest after I submit these acknowledgments, and she'll be right about those, too. Can't thank you enough, Shannon.

Also improving those rough first drafts is Yvette Grant, production editor, for making this look like a book. When I'm done with it, the thing looks like a collection of random words cut out of magazines like a ransom note. And thanks to my copyeditor, Deborah Goemans, who did her very best to make sure things made sense and were spelled correctly, and who curbed my compulsive use of commas. I can't help it. I'm just a comma freak. Thank them for what they do, or you'd be reading a book two hundred pages longer just for the commas.

Dominic Finelle came up with yet another amazing cover that manages against all odds to surpass the ones that came before it. One of the best days in the process is seeing what he's come up with this time based on my wholly inadequate suggestions. I'm not responsible for the covers on these books, folks. He is. If a book cover could get a standing ovation, these would be the ones I'd be out of my chair applauding.

Of course, the usual thanks to the people who made this series begin and continue. Christina Hogrebe of the Jane Rotrosen Agency read the manuscript for the first book in my Double Feature series, and asked Shannon to look at it. Here we are ten books later.

Josh Getzler, Danielle Burby, Tanusri Prasanna and all the gang at HSG Agency make it possible for me to do this for a living and are actual human beings at the same time. It's nice to do business with people you like. When they're also really good at what they do, that puts it over the top. And no one is a better companion than Josh for a trip to the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center.

To all the reviewers (even the not-as-happy ones) who take the time to read and discuss the books, thanks for your dedication and your honesty. Writers will tell you they never read reviews. They're lying.

Most of all, thanks to the loyal readers of the Haunted Guesthouse series. You make this happen, time and time again. Prepare to be thanked for the eighth time, right around this time next year in a page remarkably similar to this one. You are never unappreciated.

Let me just state for the record, right at the top, that I was against the plan to show
Ghost
for the first movie night at my guesthouse, but I was outvoted.

By the ghosts.

I had chosen the coming Sunday night to inaugurate my newly renovated movie room, which was at one time going to be the fitness center but had originally been the game room (it's a long story). The room was finally done the way I wanted it to be, with light chestnut stain on the paneling, beige room-darkening drapes for better projection, a very large HDTV connected to the Blu-Ray player and a killer surround-sound system. Everything was exactly the way I wanted it.

But Maxie Malone, who'd been a rising interior designer before her life was ended for her at the tender age of twenty-eight, had insisted that I was wrong. “The wood floors are too hard and shiny,” she said. “You really want an area rug in here to absorb some of the sound or the movie will echo.”

Maxie likes to play oil to my water, but although I hate to admit it, she usually makes the right suggestions about décor in the guesthouse. I'd bought the place roughly three years earlier without knowing she and Paul Harrison, a then-newly-minted private investigator who'd been poisoned while working a case for Maxie, were already inhabiting the place. It took a hard shot to the head—administered by Maxie herself—for me to develop an ability to see and hear the ghosts, and there have since been plenty of times I have regretted not ducking out of the way faster.

Anyway, after much debate, I'd finally (as usual) acquiesced to Maxie's judgment and bought a six-by-nine-foot rug in maroon and brown for the room. It looked perfect, which only made me resent Maxie more.

But that was not the argument about the movie.

I had chosen a classic film,
Lawrence of Arabia
, for our first showing. Its gorgeous vistas and sweeping scope would best show off the terrific flat-screen TV I'd bought, and its themes of enigmatic heroism would feed the soul of everyone who viewed it.

“Booooooooring,” Maxie said, and to my horror, I saw my daughter Melissa, eleven years old but wise beyond my years, nodding her head in agreement.

“It's like four hours long,” Liss sided with Maxie. “By the time it's over I'll be twelve.”

“It is a long film,” Paul agreed. You'd think someone existing through eternity would be less concerned about elapsed time. “But it is a classic.” That was better.

While my ability to see ghosts was a relatively new occurrence after the “accident” that led to my discovery of Paul and Maxie (among others), the blow—not the one to my head, but to my sensibility—was compounded by the revelation that my mother and my daughter had both been able to see and communicate with ghosts all their lives and
had concealed it from me for fear that the knowledge would make me feel inferior, when in fact it would merely have made me think the two of them were delusional.

With only three days before the premiere would take place, this insurrection was throwing a severe monkey wrench into my plans. Including the three ghosts present at the moment (Maxie, Paul and my dad), there were seven of us: Melissa, me, Mom and my boyfriend, Josh Kaplan, (who can't see or communicate with ghosts himself, but luckily didn't run for the hills when I told him about them).

I looked to my dad, hovering about two feet above the floor and admiring the paint job on the ceiling, for moral support. “What do you think?” I asked him. Dad always backs me up.

“I wasn't listening,” he said. “What's the question?” He looked to my mother, who raised an eyebrow and cocked her head to one side:
What's the difference?

“It's about a movie,” Mom told Dad, smiling at him. They have a great marriage that lasted thirty-three years while my father was alive and six years since. That's quite an accomplishment when you think about it.

Dad shrugged his shoulders and floated up closer to the ceiling so he could admire the corners and see I'd done the job right. Dad, who taught me all I know about home maintenance (which is approximately one-seventeenth of what he knows), takes great pride in my every accomplishment.

“What do you suggest?” I asked Maxie. If it was something wholly inappropriate for Melissa, I could shoot down her suggestion easily and Peter O'Toole would be mounting his camel in no time flat.

But Maxie's smart. “
Ghost
,” she said. “It's perfect because the place is haunted, and people like that.”

Perhaps I should explain.

I came back to Harbor Haven, the Jersey Shore town where I'd grown up, after my divorce from Melissa's father, a man
I refer to as The Swine because using more accurate language around my eleven-year-old daughter would be inappropriate. I'd also gotten some money from a lawsuit I'd settled with a previous employer and sunk it all into this great big Victorian at 123 Seafront Avenue. My intent had been to create a unique vacation experience for people year-round, something which doesn't happen that much down the shore, but which is possible when the building is properly insulated. Sure, it makes sense to come down here in swimming weather, but the shore is also beautiful and peaceful in winter and offers a relaxing trip when the crowds dissipate in fall and spring, too. In the early fall, like now, there is foliage to look at, but the waves still hypnotize with their sound and their beauty, and the air is crisp but salty. We get the occasional hot day, but the ocean water has cooled to the point that swimming in the Atlantic is really more for the very brave or the incredibly crazy.

But it turned out that what really drew in guests was being haunted. They love that.

I was approached just before the place opened by Edmund Rance, a representative of a company called Senior Plus Tours, which offers adventurous people over a certain age vacations with “value added” experiences.

Like hanging around with a couple of ghosts.

Senior Plus guaranteed me a number of guests in exchange for at least twice a day contact with the spirits, and they don't mean alcohol.

In order to secure Paul and Maxie's cooperation in what we call the “spook shows,” I had to make a bargain I would have preferred to avoid. It turned out that Paul wanted to keep doing investigations, not letting a little thing like being deceased stand in his way. But as he is incapable of leaving my property (Maxie has since developed the ability to travel around and now shows up wherever and whenever it's inconvenient for me), he needed someone living to do the legwork for him. In short, I agreed to sit for a private investigator's
license to help with Paul's cases if he'd convince Maxie to perform in the spook shows. Let's just say investigating crimes is not my favorite thing, but since they've held up their end of the bargain, I'm stuck doing the right thing. The moral high ground can give you nosebleeds.

“
Ghost
?” I asked now. “It's such a cliché, don't you think?”

“What?” Maxie came back. “You have a sign outside the front door that says ‘Haunted Guesthouse.' You want to promote the place based on subtlety?”

I hate it when she has a point.

“Let's take a vote,” I said, assessing the room. I figured on votes from Mom, Dad, Josh and maybe Liss in addition to my own, so I had confidence in my suggestion.

Except Maxie was grinning, and that's rarely a good thing. A mischievous poltergeist, she is emotionally a little young and unlikely to get any older, considering her not-so-alive status. She exists mostly to make me cringe, but will defend me to the . . . well, let's just say Maxie will stick up for me if someone else takes on her role of antagonist. It's an odd sort of friendship. I guess.

“Great!” she said.
Uh-oh
. “Who wants to see—”

“
Lawrence of Arabia
,” I shouted out. Get my choice in first and cut this charade short, I figured.

The problem was that only three hands went up: mine, my mother's (she'll back me up on anything I ever want to do because she lives under the deluded notion that I'm perfect) and Paul's.

I couldn't speak. The feeling of betrayal was . . . okay, it wasn't that serious, but I was still a
little
hurt.

“How about
Ghost
?” Maxie said, her smile now wide enough it seemed to be the only feature on her admittedly transparent face. Melissa repeated the question aloud for Josh, who can't see or hear ghosts.

His hand went up. So did Melissa's, Dad's and hers.

“That's a win,” Maxie crowed. “Four to three.”

Dad shrugged. “I've never seen
Ghost
,” he said.

I looked over at Josh, whose expression was that of a six-year-old boy caught standing on a kitchen chair to reach the Oreos on the top shelf. “Josh?” I said.

“I like Whoopi Goldberg,” he said sheepishly.

I was about to suggest he date her in that case, when something in the far corner of the room caught my eye. There was the indication of movement, something going from the outside wall abutting the driveway (to our right) toward the hallway to the front room (left, for those of you drawing maps at home). Very fast motion, so that I really couldn't make it out, but I thought it might be a person.

“Did you see that?” I asked Paul.

He nodded. “I think someone just passed through the house,” he said, and headed in the direction of the movement.

“See what?” Josh asked, now anxious to get back into my good graces.

“There's another ghost here,” Melissa told him. “They don't usually just barge in like that.”

Dad followed Paul toward the intruder, who must have been in the front room by now. He moves more slowly than Paul, I suppose because he was older when he died. “Let me see what's going on,” he said.

Mom looked concerned, despite the fact that as far as we know, there is no possible way that harm can befall my father anymore, but she didn't say anything.

“It's probably nothing,” I told Josh and by extension Melissa, who wouldn't have admitted to being concerned. “Ghosts do pass through every once in a while. We've found others in the house before.”

“Yeah, but this one looked like it was trying not to be noticed,” Liss said. She didn't sound worried, but had that
“woo-ooh” tone kids get when they're trying to make more of a situation than is there just for the drama it can generate.

Maxie looked annoyed. “Why is somebody always ruining it when I get the attention for a second?” she whined.

“Calm down, you won,” I told her. “We'll show
Ghost
, but over my protest.”

Maxie brightened up. “Of course you will. I won the vote!” It takes so little to make her happy—just me not getting whatever
I
want.

“Maybe I should go see, too,” Josh said, squinting in the direction Liss indicated Dad and Paul had gone. He likes to feel useful, but he sometimes overlooks certain facts.

“You wouldn't see anything,” Melissa pointed out.

Josh grinned a little sheepishly, which is one of his better grins. “Touché, Melissa,” he said. He stayed put.

From the entrance to the movie room came a somewhat tired voice. “Is there something going on in here?” Maureen Beckman, one of my younger Senior Plus guests this week, moved her walker into the room as I went over to meet her. Maureen didn't move around all that well (“My hip. As soon as I finish this vacation I'm going into the hospital to get a new one.”), so I was trying to minimize the amount she had to walk in the house. She was game, though, and had already spent a full day on the beach, something younger, sprier guests don't always find enjoyable in September.

“Nothing special, Maureen,” I said as I reached her, only a few feet into the movie room. “Something I can do for you?” This is how you learn to talk in Innkeeper School. I assume.

“Well, Alison, you know I don't like to complain.” Of course, Maureen loved nothing better than to complain; but she did it in an ingratiating way, and since I'm from New Jersey, a little complaining doesn't bother me. “But it gets a little chilly in my room at night.”

I had put Maureen in the largest room I had, which was located on the ground floor and wouldn't require her to climb stairs, and had not charged her the extra fee I usually ask for that room. It does get a hair cooler at night, though, especially at this time of year. “I can put another blanket or two in there for you,” I told her. “Do you need a space heater?”

Maureen waved a hand. “Oh no,” she said. “I'm sure extra blankets will do it. Thank you, Alison.” As she turned to leave, I saw Paul and Dad hover back into the room. There was another ghost behind them, not being dragged but certainly lagging behind. I could barely see him.

Maureen turned back. “There's just one more thing.” With Maureen there was always just one more thing. “Do you know of a reliable taxi service in the area?”