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.
Paul compensates by being able to contact other ghosts through some sort of telepathy I call the Ghosternet because I don’t have a better name for it. He goes off to some remote corner of the property and manages to send and receive messages from other dead people. I try not to think about it too much, to tell you the truth. Except when it can be useful. Other times, Paul likes to put forth on the Ghosternet that he (meaning we) can investigate for the deceased, which has historically led us (meaning me) into trouble.
All in all, I can’t say I was always crazy about having ghosts in the house. My mother and my daughter, Melissa, however, were very pleased; it turned out that they’d had the ability to see and hear ghosts all their lives but had never mentioned that little detail for fear of “upsetting” me (to be fair, it probably would have sent me into therapy). They still see more ghosts than I do, and there are days I wished they were still the only ones in the family with the “skill” to do so. That sentiment has changed somewhat since my father, who passed away a few years ago, started dropping by regularly to visit with me and his granddaughter. On those days, I’m more than glad to be able to communicate with the dead.
“I don’t know how to make your ghosts go away,” I told Everett. “But if you take this five dollars, you can go inside and Jenny will give you some soup.” I extended the money again.
Everett gave me a disdainful look. “I don’t think soup is going to keep the ghosts away,” he said. He took the money, though, and shuffled off, mumbling to himself that even the ghost lady wasn’t going to help.
I didn’t have time to explain, though, because once he moved, I noticed that Kerin Murphy had been standing behind him, no doubt listening in on our conversation. I’d heard Kerin, who had once been a queen bee in the Harbor Haven PTSO (Parent Teacher Student Organization, and no, it’s not the PTA), had returned to town after an absence of more than a year, following a separation from her husband. It was rumored she’d fled Harbor Haven for South Florida and a waitress job at an IHOP, but this was the first time I’d laid eyes on her since her resurfacing. She gave me a hollow smile and approached.
“The sharks are circling,” Jeannie muttered under her breath.
We probably should have tried to leave, but Kerin was too quick. “Why, Alison Kerby,” she said. “It’s been much too long.”