Inspector Specter (10 page)

“Thirty thousand dollars?” Melissa said. “That's an awful lot, isn't it?”

Melissa had prepared (under Mom's careful supervision) a “summer dinner” of grilled turkey breast marinated in soy sauce and basil, with sides of creamed corn and Caesar salad. So my attention to the investigation talk might have been a little diffused. Melissa had already far surpassed me as a chef, and Mom (who admittedly was a little biased) told me she had an understanding of meal planning and cooking that would soon outpace her teacher.

As those of us living ate, we'd bandied around the information Maxie had found out about Detective Ferry without much conclusion. Paul's opinion, after he stopped being an electrical outlet, was that no conclusions could be drawn: “We don't have enough facts.”

Maxie, of course, believed that the information she'd uncovered “solved the case,” and would not be persuaded that we still had to figure out who had shot Martin Ferry.

Dad thought a light run with sandpaper over the paneling would help the stain bond better with the wood veneer. (It's not that Dad wasn't paying attention to our conversation—he was—but he believes his expertise is in the home-improvement area and offers advice only when he thinks he has something helpful to contribute. Dad is the anti-Maxie.)

I was struggling with the reality of
my
situation, which was that the next time I spoke with Lieutenant McElone, I would have to let her know what “I” had found out.

“It's a very big amount of money,” I said. Melissa has a fluid vision of finances. In some areas, she's very savvy (she can always tell me which gas station has the lowest price, despite my always going to the Fuel Pit, in part to check in on our ghostly friend Everett, who died in the men's room there and is often still hanging around the station, if not the restroom), but in others, like the amount of my monthly mortgage payment, or by how much her father's child support check is often short, she has a foggier view. “The question is whether it was a payoff, or whether he might have gotten it from somewhere else,” I explained.

“I only met Detective Ferry once,” my mother said. “But he didn't dress like a man who was getting a lot of money from organized crime.” Ferry had taken the “plain” in “plainclothes officer” pretty seriously.

Josh took a sip of beer—I always have some in the fridge—and looked thoughtfully toward the napkin I'd given Paul to hold so Josh would have a point of reference. “Does Maxie know if the thirty thousand was a one-time-only event, or was it a regular deposit?”

Maxie, who had not volunteered to hold an object, snorted. “Why does he have to ask Paul?” she wanted to know. I gave her a look. “No, as far as I can tell, the thirty grand was the only suspicious deposit. But there could have been smaller payments, or maybe accounts I don't know about. Yet.”

Liss relayed Maxie's reply to Josh, who nodded and looked at Oliver in the high chair next to me. Ollie wasn't watching either ghost at the moment, probably out of a sense of perversity. If he didn't watch them
all
the time, how could I know if he really saw them? I fed him a little of the creamed corn, which he appeared to like quite a bit. Jeannie hadn't
specifically
told me not to give him any. “Maw,” he said.

This time, Josh's question really was for Paul. “Isn't it best, then, for Alison to relay the information to Lieutenant McElone and let her conduct the actual investigation?”

As much as I dreaded passing these allegations on to McElone, that was precisely what I thought had to be done, and I said so. But Paul, stroking his goatee in thought, wasn't in total agreement. “Not just yet. We
should
be taking some action. What we should do is question Detective Ferry without the lieutenant present.”

I told Josh what Paul had said, and he must have read my face. “How does that make sense?” he asked me.

“Let me guess,” I said. I looked up at Paul, who was slightly tilted to the left. When he's not paying attention to his positioning, he can list a little. “You think that Ferry will be more apt to speak freely without McElone there, even though she can't see or hear him?”

“Exactly,” Paul said. “The lieutenant was his friend and once his partner. He does not want to appear dishonest or questionable to her. He does not know you very well at all, and might be quicker to acknowledge any possible discretions.”

Josh thought that over. “Maybe so, but I don't think you should go to Detective Ferry alone,” he said when he heard Paul's plan.

“I won't be alone,” I said. There was no point in arguing with Paul on something like this. For one thing, he was always right. For another, I'd end up doing what he wanted me to do anyway. “I'll have Ollie with me. Won't I, Ollie?” A couple of kernels of corn emerged from Oliver's mouth, but he wasn't crying, and that was a definite plus.

“I was thinking of someone a little bigger than Ollie,” Josh said. “I was thinking maybe I should go.”

That was a line we'd discussed crossing, but had not done so. I wasn't sure I wanted Josh in on the detective stuff. For one thing, he had a store to run, and his grandfather Sy, though awfully spry for a man in his early nineties, could not handle Madison Paint all by himself. “You have work,” I said. “And I'm not sure Ferry would talk so freely around you, either. How about Maxie?”

Maxie, who had been floating on her back, sat up. “What about Maxie?” she asked.

“How about coming with me to get some answers out of Detective Ferry?”

Maxie's face changed immediately into a picture of something two inches short of alarm. “When?” she asked.

“I'm thinking tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow!” Maxie closed those two inches in a blink and was now in a full-on panic. “I can't! I have to go see my mom!”

“Okay, that's it,” I said, standing up. Not that it helped much, because Maxie was already over my head, literally. “What is going on with your mother? Is there anything we can do to help?”

Maxie squeezed her eyes shut, and her head vibrated.
Shook
would have been too mild a word. She was about to either yell out something (possibly even the truth) or vanish into thin air again.

Until a knock came on the kitchen door. Everybody turned to look.

“Yes?” I called.

Stephanie Muldoon stuck her head through the swinging door. “Hi, Alison?” she began. Some guests believe that because I don't serve food, the kitchen is a verboten area at the guesthouse, although I never tell them anything like that. Most of the ghost conversations take place there, but I don't keep the room off-limits.

“Hi, Stephanie. What's up?” I gestured her in, and she walked toward Melissa, Oliver and me at the center island, where we were eating. “Something I can help with?” I asked. As I keep reminding everyone, my primary business
is
as innkeeper, not detective. There are times the line gets a little blurry, but it's never erased.

“There isn't a problem,” Stephanie answered. She nodded to Mom, whom she'd met a couple of nights earlier, and then Josh and Melissa. “It's about the ghosts.”

Paul and Maxie looked at each other. Dad looked at me.

I saw Paul's hand go to his head, like the last time he'd gotten a message from Martin Ferry, and he sank down through the floor into the basement, which I thought I might start calling “The Paulcave.” The napkin he'd been holding as a signal to Josh floated down to the floor, unnoticed by Stephanie.

“It wasn't me,” Maxie said.

“What about the ghosts?” I asked Stephanie.

“Well . . .” Stephanie looked up. I wasn't sure if she was trying to look for the ghosts or just thinking of how to phrase whatever was coming next. “I think Rita might be a little more nervous about being in a haunted house than we anticipated.”

This is not unusual. Some people take on the haunted vacation with Senior Plus thinking it'll be a great adventure, or that they can face their fears, but then, no matter how benign the ghosts in my house act (and really, even Maxie would never hurt anyone), they convince themselves that they're in great danger. I've even had a few guests leave early, though I sincerely hoped Stephanie and Rita were not about to join that group.

“Then why not go and talk to her about it?” Melissa said.

“Maybe that would be best,” Stephanie agreed. “I think she's a little . . . reluctant to come in here. She's heard you talking to the ghosts in this room.”

We all filed out of the kitchen—I picked up Oliver, who would probably need a diaper change soon—with Josh, Melissa and Mom following behind me. I wasn't sure whether Dad and Maxie were coming, but it was a decent bet. Dad for the support, and Maxie because there's nothing she enjoys more than seeing someone who isn't her be made to feel uncomfortable, especially if that someone's me.

Rita was in the den, sitting in an intentionally nonchalant pose in one of the overstuffed easy chairs. I set Oliver down on the floor and sat on the edge of the coffee table in front of her.

“Hi, Rita,” I began conversationally. “So Stephanie tells me that you might be feeling a little anxious about being in a house that has ghosts in it.” (
Haunted
is a word to avoid with the queasy.)

“Maybe a little,” Rita allowed. “I mean, I don't think anything bad has happened or anything.”

Oliver, who had crawled over to Josh and been picked up—his goal—was getting sleepy, and the need for that diaper change was getting more . . . noticeable. Josh bounced him a little, then carried Ollie out of the room to the kitchen, where the diaper bag was stashed.

“The man's a keeper,” Dad said, pointing at Josh. Dad is on a campaign to get Josh and me married, despite our never once discussing the subject (me and Josh, that is; Dad's discussed the prospect with several people). I gave him a curt nod and looked back at Rita, whose attention was concentrated on Stephanie, who stood to her side. Rita seemed to be asking for strength from her wife, and getting it.

“So what is it that bothers you, then? Is it just the idea of them?” Mom, being direct, sounded a little more like a district attorney; that might have been her intention.

“I guess.” I could tell that Rita wasn't being intentionally evasive; she honestly didn't seem like she could quite put her finger on what was bothering her. “I'm sure the ghosts in your house are very nice. I'm not afraid in the house.”

Okay, that was odd. “You're anxious outside?” I said. “Has that happened before you came here?”

“No.” Rita shook her head. “But I saw something outside I wasn't expecting, and it shook me up a little.”

“What did you see?” Liss asked. It must have been something pretty gruesome, I figured, to be an issue. Too late, I wondered if my eleven-year-old should be listening, let alone leading the interrogation.

“A hat.”

“A hat?” I said. Well, at least that seemed pretty PG. “You saw a hat?”

Stephanie sat down next to her wife and took her hand. “Rita said she saw a hat floating right on the edge of the ocean, and she thought that meant there was a ghost out there.”

“And you didn't see this hat?” I asked Stephanie.

She looked embarrassed. “I was in the ladies' room.”

“Couldn't it just have been blowing in the wind?” Mom asked, unintentionally setting Bob Dylan on a continuous loop in my head. “Someone's hat got away from them? It gets pretty breezy by the water.”

Again, Rita shook her head negatively. “It was floating there. Steady. At one point, it looked like it was floating back and forth, like the ghost was moving his head around for no reason. Somehow that image just made me a little . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“What kind of hat was it, exactly?”

“A cap,” Rita answered. “Kind of uniform-looking, like a cop or a soldier or something.”

Maxie was staring out the glass doors in the back of the room at the beach, which was still visible even as the sun was going down. I couldn't tell if her expression was one of puzzlement or worry. Did she know something about this hat-wearing ghost? Was she thinking about her mother? Either way, her reaction was odd.

Paul rose up through the floor looking serious, which was not at all odd. Paul would look serious at a Mel Brooks film festival. He has a sense of humor, but there are times I think he left it in Toronto when he moved to New Jersey to start his career as an investigator.

“I think I can allay your fears,” I told Rita. “If you saw a hat by itself, you didn't see a ghost.” I was stretching the truth a little. Paul or Maxie could hold up objects seen by living people—that was the basis of what they did during the “spook shows,” anyway—but I wanted to make Rita feel more secure.

Stephanie and Rita exchanged another look; Rita seemed edgy, Stephanie indulgent. I got the impression that Stephanie thought Rita had just been out in the sun a little too long.