Haunted Guest House Mystery 03-Old Haunts by E. J. Copperman Read Free Book Online Page B

reading The Bridges of Madison County . Don Petrone sat looking elegant in his blazer and long pants (and not sweating, which was remarkable even in the air-conditioning). The man should have been wearing a captain’s hat.
    Lucy Simone, the youngest of the current group, was out with friends from the area. She wasn’t one of the Senior Plus guests—she was a native New Jerseyan who’d switched coasts after college. It was not a beach vacation for her, since the ocean wasn’t exactly a novelty for someone from California. The Swine was taking up the last available room.
    The five of them in the den all looked up when I walked in. I must have had a look of despair on my face, because they all appeared concerned when they saw me.
    “Are you all right, dear?” Mrs. Fischer asked.
    “Just fine,” I said, even though I felt like I was being pressured into something I really didn’t want to do. “Just trying to hold onto my convictions.”
    “Convictions?” Francie, a sixtyish woman with flaming-red hair reminiscent of Lucille Ball or Bozo the Clown, asked. “Are you an ex-con?”
    “No, Francie,” Don, who was even wearing an actual ascot in the mid-nineties weather, admonished. “Convictions, like in your principles.”
    I winced, anticipating a follow-up comment from Francie about the state of public schools’ administration, but luckily, she remained silent. From behind me, however, I heard Maxie’s voice, and it didn’t sound happy.
    “You won’t do this for me?” she asked.
    Immediately, I did a mental inventory of the guests. Everyone in the room had come via Senior Plus Tours, which meant they had come looking for ghosts. I could in fact be seen speaking to someone who wasn’t visible and still stand a chance of not being considered a raving lunatic. So I turned and saw Luther in the doorway to the kitchen, looking pained. Above his head was Maxie, hovering over the kitchen door, wearing a black T-shirt with “Good to the Last Drop” emblazoned on her bust.
    I couldn’t talk to Maxie in front of Luther, but I could talk to Luther. “I won’t do this for you,” I said, looking just a little above his head. He must have thought I had some strange astigmatism.
    And, of course, that was when I heard The Swine’s voice from the entrance to the foyer, behind me. “Which one of us are you talking to, Alison?” he asked.
    “You’d do it for anybody else, but not me?” Maxie demanded, as if there was no one else in the room. Maxie didn’t much care about anyone else being in the room. She could see them, she could hear them, she could even sort of touch them, but for the most part, she ignored the guests except during the two-a-day spook shows she knew were necessary to my Senior Plus contract. “I help you out every single day with this little guesthouse of yours, and you can’t do this one thing for me?”
    “It’s one of the ghosts,” Francie piped up to Steven. “She’s talking to one of the ghosts.” Thanks a heap, Francie.
    “Ghosts?” The Swine put on a look of absolute bafflement. Melissa, at his side with the inevitable ugly stuffed animal I’m sure Steven had “won” for her at the boardwalk (it looked kind of like a neon-orange goat), looked helplessly at me.
    “Ghosts?” Luther echoed. Francie’s head turned between Steven and Luther like she was watching a tennis match.
    “Sure,” Francie went on. “There are ghosts haunting this place. It’s why I came here.”
    Luther did what people do when they hear there might be ghosts in the room. He looked up and scanned the ceiling. I understand it, but they’re almost never there.
    Melissa, meanwhile, was intent on getting her father out of the room, and if she could, I resolved to increase her allowance. “Come on, Daddy,” she tried. “I want to see how the tiger looks in my room.” Oh, so it was a tiger ?
    But Steven wasn’t buying. “Ghosts, Alison?” he asked.
    I was about to suggest we go into the kitchen to