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THE THRILL OF THE HAUNT

Available in paperback November 2013 from Berkley Prime Crime!

“Are you the ghost lady?”

I’ve heard the question many times, but I’m not crazy about it, frankly. Living in a large Victorian with my eleven-year-old daughter and two dead people who never took the hint—while trying to make a go of the place as a guesthouse—is difficult enough. But since Harbor Haven, New Jersey, is a small shore town, and everybody knows all about everybody else, the question does come up.

Usually, to be honest, I try to summon up an icy stare that makes the asker back down, but in this case, I did my best to force a small, knowing smile and nod. You had to be nice to Everett.

Everett, as far as I knew, was the only homeless man in Harbor Haven. He was in his mid-fifties now and never bothered anybody. It was rumored that he was a veteran of one war or another, and post-military life had clearly not been kind to him. Even on this fine spring day, he was bundled up with clothing because he couldn’t afford to jettison anything that he wouldn’t be able to replace before winter.

Everett was an oddly beloved figure around town. In a community that liked to flaunt its concern for its own, Everett gave everyone an opportunity to show how understanding we could be; we out-kinded each other when dealing with him. There was a great deal of hypocrisy, of course, as no one really ever tried to know him or tried to help in any substantial way, but that was almost beside the point.

Everett had taken up residence, more or less, outside Stud Muffin, our local pastry shop, which showed a good deal of intelligence on his part. People grabbing a quick snack or a coffee would provide him with spare change, and Jenny Webb, owner of the establishment, might occasionally sneak him a day-old product or two. Even now, with the Stud Muffin still a little shabbier than usual, since what we call “the storm” and the media calls Hurricane Sandy, it wasn’t unusual to see Everett in his Mount Vesuvius of clothing, with shoe soles worn through, eating a raspberry-filled croissant on any given morning.

I’d just been leaving the shop with my best friend, Jeannie, when Everett had stopped me with his question. Jeannie had recently returned to work at Accurate Insurance (although why accuracy is the first quality one would look for in an insurance company eludes me) after maternity leave, and her son Oliver was now spending time with a nanny named Louise, whom Jeannie had hired after an exhaustive search that made the vetting process of a Supreme Court justice seem like answering an ad on Craigslist. Jeannie is, let’s say, a hands-on kind of mom.

“I guess so,” I told him. I gave Jeannie a glance and reached into my overstuffed tote bag for my wallet, then took out a five dollar bill to give to Everett. Jeannie did the same.

But Everett held up a hand like Diana Ross singing “Stop in the Name of Love.”

“Thanks, Ghost Lady,” he said, “but I don’t need money. I need other help.”

“What kind of help?” I asked. I held on to the money in case Everett changed his mind.

“Ghost help,” he insisted. Jeannie, to my left, stifled a snicker. She doesn’t believe in ghosts, especially not the ones in my house. Jeannie has seen objects fly by her face, holes inexplicably open in walls, watched her best friend (me), my mother, daughter and Jeannie’s own husband, Tony, all hold conversations with the local spirits (in Tony’s case, one-sided conversations), and still she refuses to acknowledge their reality. Her complete denial is a talent I sometimes wish I could cultivate in myself. It would make life so much simpler.

Jeannie is very persistent. Some would say stubborn, but not me.

“What do you mean, ghost help?” she asked Everett, clearly amused by the whole conversation.

Everett, who never used the bench outside Stud Muffin (“That’s for paying customers”), gestured toward it, beckoning us to sit down. But we were on a tight schedule. Jeannie had to get back to her job after this quick lunch break, and I had to get back to the guesthouse to greet newcomers this afternoon, so we chose to remain standing.

“I’m being haunted,” Everett said. “I’ve got ghosts after me.”

I’ve been able to see some—not all—ghosts ever since I suffered a head injury after I bought the guesthouse, so I immediately looked around to scout the area. There were some ghosts nearby on Ocean Avenue, but that’s not unusual. Nothing looked threatening. I could see an elderly couple hovering over a bench half a block down, a policeman from about 1950, judging from his uniform, who appeared to be patrolling his beat a foot above the pavement, and a small tabby cat that was just lying around, albeit with nothing holding him up. He stretched and looked bored.

“How do you know there are ghosts after you?” I asked Everett. “I don’t see anyone following you now.”

Jeannie gave me a look that indicated she thought I was patronizing the unfortunate mentally ill man, but I curled my lip and sneered at her—a talent I’d been practicing for exactly this purpose—and turned my attention back to Everett.

“Been getting vibes,” he said. “Been hearing people say things.” That was it?

“What do you want me to do?” I asked him. “How can I help?”

Everett looked surprised, as if I should have known. “Make them stop,” he said. Simple.

“If I could do that . . .” I started to say. It was a knee-jerk reaction. Sometimes having ghosts in the house is not as much fun as you might think.

Perhaps I should explain.

I’d bought the Victorian at 123 Seafront Avenue specifically to turn it into a guesthouse (and no, it’s not a bed and breakfast, although I’d started providing coffee and tea in the mornings lately and had been thinking about asking my mother for cooking lessons) less than two years earlier. While I was doing the necessary repairs and renovations, I got hit in the head with a bucket of wall compound, and when I recovered, I could see there were two ghosts on the property I’d just bought.

Paul Harrison had been a fledgling private detective in his thirties when he died. He’d been hired to protect Maxie Malone, a 28-year-old newly minted interior designer. The protection hadn’t worked out that well, though, as both Paul and Maxie were poisoned the day after he was hired, and they both died in what, almost a year later, became my house.

They were both stuck on the property—that is, they were unable to leave it—at that time, and if I wanted to keep the building into which I’d just sunk my entire life savings, my divorce settlement and the receipts from a lawsuit I’d settled (never mind), I was stuck with them.

Paul wasn’t bad company; he’s a thoughtful, considerate man who might have appealed to me in other ways if he’d been, you know, alive. But Maxie . . . well, my mother says she has “good intentions.” Perhaps. Maxie also likes to drive me insane, and ever since she’s gained the ability to move around outside my property (which Paul still can’t do; the rules seem to change from ghost to ghost), she’s almost inescapable.