Inspector Specter (2 page)

I was stripping white paint off the paneling in the new home theater (formerly game room) of my guesthouse when the cell phone in my pocket vibrated, indicating a text.

Normally, I wouldn't have bothered to check the phone immediately, at least not before I'd finished the task at hand and showered—and very likely changed my clothes, ordered dinner and straightened up a couple of rooms—but my daughter, Melissa, was at her friend Wendy's house this afternoon and might have been texting to let me know she needed a ride home or (more likely) to ask if she could spend the night there.

Such are the thrills of summer vacation. You're only eleven once.

I wiped my hands off the best I could, then let the rag fall onto the drop cloth I'd carefully placed under the work area. I am nothing if not prepared.

But the text I'd received was not from Melissa; it was from Detective Lieutenant Anita McElone of the Harbor Haven Police Department. My breath stopped for a second. When your eleven-year-old isn't at home, you really don't want to get a call from the police. I knew McElone a little, but we weren't what I'd call “friends,” and she'd never contacted me out of the blue before.

The text read: “COME OUTSIDE TO YOUR PORCH.”

That took some of my panic away but piqued my curiosity. I looked out the window of the home theater—therein lies a tale; it was slated to become a fitness center for the guests until I found out how much exercise equipment costs—and sure enough, McElone was standing on the front porch next to the glider, hands clasped behind her, pacing.

I sighed. The big scaredy-cat. Lieutenant McElone, one of the most unflappable people I have ever met, is afraid to come into my house because she thinks she'll see a ghost. Which is silly. McElone can't see the ghosts who stay in my house.

Perhaps I should explain.

Melissa and I moved to Harbor Haven, the town where I grew up, about three years ago after a divorce from a man I call “The Swine,” although that sometimes makes me feel like I'm insulting actual pigs. I bought the property at 123 Seafront because I wanted to start a new life for us here on the Jersey Shore, and I'd been in the process of renovating the place when things changed after a freak . . . we'll call it an “accident” . . . left me with a severely bruised head, a concussion, and the ability to see ghosts. Specifically, Paul Harrison and Maxie Malone, who had been inhabiting the old Victorian since they'd been murdered on the premises. Once they realized that I could see them, they'd wanted me to find out who had killed them. But that's a story told elsewhere.

As it turned out, I was not the only member of my family who could see Paul and Maxie, though I was the only one who'd had to sustain a head injury first. My mother and Melissa were both professional-level ghost communicators and had been keeping that little fact from me for, let's say all
my
life in Mom's case and all
her
life in Melissa's. But I have forgiven them. I am magnanimous. And it comes in handy now that my father has passed away. I'm sad he's dead, but he's still around a lot. My family is an emotional roller coaster. Probably in a different way than yours.

I took a breath before heading outside to McElone. I'd specifically chosen this moment to work on the theater because I was, for once, alone in my thoughts, something that almost
never
happens around the guesthouse. With Liss at her friend Wendy's and all six of my current guests out at the beach on this scorching-hot day, the only “company” I'd normally have had would be the ghosts. But Maxie, who'd recently developed the ability to leave the property, had decided to go visit her mother, and Paul, who still can't wander farther than my property line, had been . . . not upset, and not exactly broody lately, but showing signs of some ennui, which he had not explained. I decided he was a grown man—if a dead one, which would understandably bum
anyone
out—and I'd let him work out his issues until he brought them up himself.

Wiping off my hands again, I walked out of the theater, down the corridor to the entrance, and opened the door. A blast of heat and humidity, which you tend to forget about when you're living in air-conditioning, smacked me hard in the face.

McElone wasn't even sweating. I'd been exposed to the tropical wave for three seconds and was already feeling moist, but she had no human responses. She was, I had decided long before, not so much a regular person as a cop who occasionally took in air to survive.

“This is what it's come to?” I asked. “You text me from my own front porch because you're afraid of my house?”

“I'm not
afraid
,” she protested. “I'm just not interested in seeing any more than I already have.” The lieutenant had been witness to a few of the less conventional events that take place in my house. Events that several of my guests pay good money to witness, but the novelty of it is lost on McElone.

“You sure you don't want to come inside?” I tried. “I promise there are no ghosts around at the moment, and it's got to be a hundred degrees out here.”

McElone held up a hand at the very suggestion, which made her look a little like a very imposing cigar store Indian. Cigar store Native American? “I'm fine here.”

There was a tentative quality to her that I'd never seen before. McElone doesn't actually have a sense of humor, but she's usually sharper in conversation than this.

Something was bothering her.

It probably would have been bothering her more if she'd known that despite my assurances about the lack of ghosts, Paul had just risen up from the crawl space under the front porch and was watching her closely. “You didn't call the lieutenant, did you?” he asked, knowing full well that I wouldn't answer him directly with her there.

“What brings you here, Lieutenant?” I asked for both our sakes. “Have there been complaints about the guesthouse again?” Locals in Harbor Haven know the stories about the place, and I had recently installed a prominent sign, just to the left of the front door, that read proudly, “Haunted Guesthouse,” replacing a temporary one Melissa had made on poster board.

But occasionally the odd—and some of them are
very
odd—tourist or a townsperson with an especially prickly nature makes a complaint at the police station about “weird goings-on” or “strange noises” emanating from the house. None of which is actually true, since the ghosts can't be heard at all if you don't have the ear for it.

“Do you remember Martin Ferry?” McElone asked, out of nowhere.

“Detective Ferry?” I asked. I remembered him as a sour-natured detective in Seaside Heights, who had once reluctantly shared some information with me. We hadn't hit it off so much as we'd tolerated each other. “Wasn't he your partner before you came here to Harbor Haven?”

McElone nodded. Then she shuddered a little, bit her lip and looked like she was fighting tears. “He's dead,” she said finally, forcing the words out.

“Oh, Lieutenant,” I said. I've never called McElone by her name, only her rank. We don't have that kind of relationship. “I'm so sorry to hear it. Was it sudden?” I recalled Ferry as a middle-aged man with a prodigious belly; I wondered if his heart had given out.

“Very sudden,” McElone answered. “Somebody shot him.”

“Come inside,” I said again to McElone. I was getting really hot out on the porch. “I promise nothing strange will happen.” I might have said that last part a little louder than was necessary; I wanted to emphasize it to Paul. I had to admit, the heat and the news of Ferry had me just a little off balance.

“No,” the lieutenant answered. “Really.”

“At least sit down,” I suggested. I have a glider on the front porch, and gestured toward it. McElone surveyed it up and down, as if trying to determine what these puny humans do on such things, but eventually sat down and let out a breath.

“I'm going to get myself a glass of lemonade,” I told her. “Would you like one, Lieutenant?”

McElone turned her head suddenly, as if she'd just realized I was there. “Yeah. Sure. Thank you.” This
was
serious; she wasn't even being snide. Snide is McElone's baseline attitude when I'm around.

I opened the door again and let the cool, dry air envelop me as I walked into my supposedly terrifying house. Paul slipped through the door (and when I say
through the door
 . . .) and followed me, as I'd hoped he would.

“Why do you think she came here?” I asked him quietly. “She seems really shaken by what happened to him.”

“I think it's obvious,” the spook to my right answered. “She wants our help in finding Detective Ferry's killer.”

Paul, who'd been a fledgling private investigator when his life was cut short on his first solo case—guarding Maxie—and I had an arrangement: He and Maxie would help me guarantee an interactive experience for some of my guests (those who booked through Senior Plus Tours, looking for the “value-added” aspect of staying in a haunted house) if I helped him. As it turns out, eternity is a long time, and being a ghost stuck within my property lines was a little dull. Paul wanted to keep his hand in the investigation biz. He'd need “legs” outside the house on occasion. And since Melissa was (at the time) nine years old and Mom was not exactly as spry as she used to be, Paul chose me.

Suffice it to say that while I was not completely thrilled at the prospect of working PI cases, I
was
thrilled with the idea of guaranteed guests for my business, which is what Senior Plus assured me they'd send if I could deliver the spooks. So after a while I'd caved and sat for the private investigator's exam, Maxie reluctantly signed up for the “spook shows,” the guests started coming and I forgot all about my PI license until Paul started insisting that I keep my end of the bargain and actually take cases.

He can communicate with other spirits—I call it the Ghosternet—and he let it be known that “we” were open for business. So once in a while a ghost will ask him for help, and I have to go along for the ride if I want to keep my real business running. Which is also how I know Lieutenant McElone (who doesn't respect my detecting skills much, and she's right).

Now I looked at Paul carefully. “You know, there are times when you overestimate the draw of your imaginary detective agency,” I told him. He frowned at the word
imaginary
, but I didn't give him time to answer. “McElone is a detective herself, and a good one. She doesn't need me—and as far as she knows, the whole ‘agency' is me—to help her on an investigation. She has the Harbor Haven Police Department.”

I opened a cupboard and took out two glasses. Melissa would have been impressed that I used the actual glass ones. When it's just the two of us, we drink out of plastic cups I buy at the Acme. We're a classy family.

“No, she doesn't,” Paul countered. “Keep in mind, Detective Ferry was a member of the Seaside Heights department. Unless he was killed here in Harbor Haven, his case is not within the lieutenant's jurisdiction.”

I went to the fridge and got out the pitcher of lemonade (which, in the interest of full disclosure, Melissa had made, following a recipe her grandmother had given her; I'm either the world's worst or the least-inspired cook, depending on whether you ask me or the my mother, who's diplomatic to a fault) and walked to the counter.

“I guarantee the cops in Seaside would be all over the murder of one of their own,” I told Paul. “Even if McElone wants to look into it herself, she has to trust them to handle it. There's no reason to ask me.” I got a tray from the cabinet under the microwave oven.

Paul raised an eyebrow and put his hands into the pockets of his jeans, a sign that he was getting stubborn about something. This was different from when he's thinking, when he'll feverishly stroke his goatee. You get to know someone when they inhabit your house, even if they died before you got there.

“I'll bet you that the lieutenant asks you for help when you go back out to the porch,” he said. “I'll bet you I'm right.”

I put the glasses and the pitcher on the tray and lifted it, heading for the kitchen door. (Perhaps it should be noted that this was a special favor for the lieutenant—the guesthouse is not a bed-and-breakfast, so even my guests don't get more than a morning cup of coffee or tea out of me.) “Fine for you,” I said. “But it's not like you can pay off when I win. What are you betting?”

“If I win the bet, we take the case for Lieutenant McElone,” he said.

“And when
I
win?” We were almost to the front door.

“
If
you were to win, we turn down the next investigation we're offered, and I won't complain about it. How's that?”

“Double or nothing,” I said.

He looked puzzled. “Double or nothing?”

“When I win the bet, I get to turn down the next
two
cases you cook up on the Ghosternet. Deal?”

Paul didn't even stop to think. “Deal.”

I tilted my head toward the knob on the front door. “Do you mind?”

Paul reached over and opened the door for me, which was a vast improvement over what he could do when I first met him (at the time, picking up a quarter was a chore requiring intense concentration). I thanked him quietly as I carried the tray back into the blast furnace.

I put the tray down on a wicker table next to the glider where McElone was still sitting, looking uncomfortable but amazingly not sweaty. I poured the two glasses and handed her one as I leaned on the railing facing her.

“I'm really sorry for your loss, Lieutenant,” I said, and meant it. “I know Detective Ferry was a friend, and this must hurt. I wish there were something I could do.”

“There is,” Lieutenant McElone said. “You can help me find out who killed Martin.”

Paul's grin was so wide I swear I could see his rear molars.

I concentrated my attention not on my usual terrible luck in gambling—I lose money driving
past
Atlantic City—but on the woman inhabiting my glider. “I don't understand,” I told McElone.

Her face showed no emotion; her voice was not the least bit wavery. She looked at me with her un-sweat-stained face and said, without hesitation, “I'm asking you to help solve my ex-partner's murder. Will you do that for me?”

Now, the fact of the matter is that bet or no bet, Paul or no Paul, I owed Anita McElone my life at least once and probably more times than that. She had been there for me at times when I most needed someone. She deserved to get what she wanted from me in her time of great need.

But what she really needed was a good detective, which I wasn't. “Are you sure you want me?” I asked her. “Don't you want a more . . . experienced investigator?”

McElone looked at me for a long time, so long that I started to think maybe she was staring into space, thinking of her lost friend. Maybe she was trying to bore a hole in my face with her eyes.

Then she did the oddest thing I could have imagined: She laughed. Not long, not uproariously—she laughed like she'd been taken by surprise by something so unbearably absurd that there was no other logical response.

“I'm not asking you to
investigate
,” McElone said. “Believe me. I've
seen
you investigate. No offense.”

“None taken,” I said. I am very objective about my (lack of) detecting skills. But Paul looked a little put off. “But then, how can I help solve Detective Ferry's murder?”

McElone's face lost any hint of amusement, not that there had been much to begin with. She broke eye contact and looked off toward the street. She bit her lip, but not like she was trying to fend off tears; it was more like she really didn't want to have to say what was about to come out of her mouth.

She was embarrassed, and I'd never seen her embarrassed before.

“I want you . . . that is, I'm wondering if you would . . . please . . .”

Paul broke the silence, but only I could tell. “She thinks there might be something you can do with people like me,” he said. “She wants you to get in touch with ghosts.”

I almost shook my head to deny it, and then remembered my track record today betting against Paul. I turned toward McElone and tried out his theory instead. “You think a . . . ghost can help?” I asked gently.

McElone closed her eyes quickly, as if I'd said something dreadfully painful. And she nodded, an almost imperceptible gesture, and let out her breath. Make that Paul two, me zero, for the day.

“But you don't believe in ghosts,” I reminded her, though she probably didn't need the help. “You've always made fun of me when I say something about them.”

“She's afraid of us, and you know that,” Paul admonished me. “She's lost a friend. Let her up off the mat.”

McElone turned back to face me, something like the usual fire back in her eyes. “I have seen stuff go down in this house that I can't explain away,” she said. “I have watched things fly around with nobody holding them up. I have heard you talk to people who weren't there and get answers to questions that I couldn't hear. I have seen you get out of situations you had no business surviving. A friend of mine is dead, and I want to find out who did it. I'll use anything—
anything
—to accomplish that. If you can get me some good information, I don't care where you get it from, understand? I'll find the way to make it admissible in a court of law later. Now,” she said firmly, “Can. You. Help. Me?”

I didn't give Paul time to interrupt, because I wanted him to hear me say it without prompting. “Yes,” I said. “I can, and I will.”