Berkley Prime Crime titles by E. J. Copperman
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEED
AN UNINVITED GHOST
OLD HAUNTS
CHANCE OF A GHOST
Specials
A WILD GHOST CHASE
AN OPEN SPOOK
An Open Spook
E. J. Copperman
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
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AN OPEN SPOOK
A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author
Copyright © 2013 by Jeffrey Cohen.
Excerpt from The Thrill of the Haunt by E. J. Copperman copyright © 2013 by Jeffrey Cohen.
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eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-14057-8
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Berkley Prime Crime Special edition / October 2013
Cover photos: Man walking © by Kamenetskiy Konstantin/Shutterstock; House © by B. Brown/Shutterstock.
Cover design by Jason Gill.
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.
Contents
Also by E. J. Copperman
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Epilogue
Addendum
Special Excerpt from THE THRILL OF THE HAUNT
Prologue
“I thought you got rid of that thing years ago.” My husband Jack was looking over my left shoulder as I rummaged through my jewelry box. I was looking for a particular pin, but Jack had noticed a half-inch-wide strip of nickel I’d stashed in the box months before.
“No,” I assured him. “I don’t think I could ever get rid of it. But I put it aside after that time at Alison’s.”
“What time at Alison’s?” Jack asked.
“Oh, that’s right. It was back when you were still refusing to go over there,” I said with a sniff and rolled my eyes at him. “You were being so silly about that.”
“It’s water under the bridge and best left alone,” he answered. Jack can be sensitive about things when he knows he’s in the wrong. “But remind me why this was such a big deal.” He picked it up out of the jewelry box and examined it like I hadn’t owned it since before we were married. “My memory isn’t what it used to be.”
“Let’s face it, honey.” I said, “Nothing about you is the way it used to be.” Jack and I were married for thirty-five years . . . when he was living. But since I’ve never had a problem seeing the dead, we were able to pick up pretty much where we left off after he passed away five years ago. In fact, Jack came back as a ghost in much better shape than he’d been the last couple of years he was alive.
It’s all really quite simple: For as long as I can remember, I have been able to see and communicate with the spirits of people who are no longer alive. To me, it’s as natural to see a ghost as it is to pass a stranger on the street. I saw a program once on one of the educational stations—maybe the one that shows Honey Boo Boo—that described people like me as “ghost whisperers.” I think that’s silly; there’s no reason to whisper to a ghost any more than to a living person. Most of the time, their hearing is just fine.
Things became complicated when I noticed that our daughter, Alison, even at an early age, could not see ghosts the way I could. She simply was born without the ability. But she was perfect in every other way, so I let it go and decided not to say anything to her so she wouldn’t feel bad about it. Instead, she learned some tricks of her father’s trade. Jack was a handyman, and he liked to show our daughter how to fix things around the house. He said this was so she’d never be in need of a man just because he knew how to use a screwdriver and she didn’t.
Unfortunately, Alison found a different kind of man altogether and married him. The less said about Steven the better, but he did at least leave Alison with my granddaughter, Melissa, a levelheaded, brilliant, mature-beyond-her-years girl approaching the age of eleven.
Melissa could also see and hear ghosts very early on. She and I bonded over it when she was only three or four, when Alison was working at a lumberyard and I would watch my granddaughter during the times she was not in preschool. Melissa was delighted that I could see the same people she could, because she’d tried to point them out to her mother and been told her friends were “imaginary,” a word she didn’t understand.
“It means Mommy can’t see them,” I explained to her.
“Why not?” Melissa wanted to know.
“Some people can draw, and some people can’t draw. Some can see all the people, and some can’t.”
“I can draw and see all the people,” Melissa said.
“That’s because you’re a genius.”
As she grew, Melissa came to understand that the people only she and I could see were ghosts, and that didn’t seem to bother her because most of them seemed happy enough, she said. But after they moved into the house in Harbor Haven, Alison suffered a blow to her head while renovating, and her ability was somehow activated. She can only see about half the ghosts Melissa and I can—and she only recently was able to even see her own father, but that was his fault, and a whole different story—so we try not to lord our talents over her.
“I died, Loretta. It tends to change a man,” Jack reminded me now. “Are you heading over to Alison’s?”
I nodded. “Melissa wants to learn how to cook lasagna, and there’s something Alison wants to talk about,” I said. “She asked for you to come. I think she’s got a home improvement question. Josh is coming, too.” Josh Kaplan is Alison’s new boyfriend. She likes to ask them both about renovations to her house because Jack was a handyman when he was alive and Josh co-owns a paint store. But since Josh can’t see or hear Jack, it was best to get there early if Jack was going to be of any help. It saves so much explanation.