Night of the Living Deed by E.J. Copperman Read Free Book Online Page B

We said our good-byes, and I moved toward the kitchen.
    “If we can avoid any more interruptions . . .” Paul started.
    Oh yeah, ghosts in the room! “What do you want now ?” I asked. “Can’t you see I have a crisis on my hands?” And on my kitchen floor, now that I remembered that.
    “ You have a crisis?” Paul demanded. “We’re trapped in this house for the rest of eternity, and you have a crisis?”
    I ignored him (partly because I didn’t want to think about them being trapped in my house for eternity), and walked into the kitchen to survey the hardened white mess on the floor. I could break it up with a hammer, but that would mean sanding and refinishing the whole floor afterward. Another day and a half of work. “What do you mean, ‘trapped in this house’?” I asked. “Can’t you leave the house? Go roam the countryside?” I looked at Maxie. “Haunt a punk-rock biker bar?”
    Maxie picked up the mallet again and took a step toward me, but Paul stopped her. “Humph,” she said, and scowled off into the living room. I made sure she didn’t have the mallet with her this time.
    “We can’t seem to leave the grounds,” Paul went on as if nothing had happened. “Every time we try to get past the sidewalk in front or the fence in back, we just can’t move.”
    “Is this one of those things where you have some unfinished business here on Earth and have to get through it before you can enter the afterlife?” I asked.
    Paul shrugged. “I have no idea,” he said. “Remember? No handbook.”
    There was no sense in denial anymore—they were here, and they very much appeared to be ghosts. “Okay,” I sighed. “Tell me what happened and what you want me to do.”
    “All right, then.” Paul seemed pleased at my apparent cooperation. “The night . . . the night Maxie and I . . .”
    “ Died ,” Maxie shouted from the next room. She sounded disturbingly happy, and I chose not to dwell on why.
    “That night,” Paul continued, trying to pretend he hadn’t hesitated, “Maxie and I went to a meeting of the Harbor Haven planning board. Actually, Maxie went to the meeting, and I went as her bodyguard.”
    “Another bang-up job,” came the comment from the living room. Paul ignored that , too.
    So did I. “Who needs a bodyguard to go to a planning board meeting?” I asked.
    He took a deep breath—which was interesting, since I doubted he needed the air anymore—and re-boarded his train of thought. “There was a proposal to condemn this property and sell it to a developer. The only place you can be assured of making money on real estate is near the shore. Maxie was there to defend her claim on the house.”
    “They can do that? Just take the house out from under the owner?” How come I hadn’t heard about any of this when I was buying the place? I’d have to get on the phone to Terry Wright the minute I was finished hearing the sad story of these two freeloading displaced spirits.
    “Yes,” Paul answered. “Assuming it gets approved by the various levels of the municipal government. But Maxie spoke up at the meeting, and the plan was rejected that night.”
    “I don’t understand what that has to do with your . . . circumstances,” I told him.
    Paul frowned. “Neither do I,” he said. “All I can tell you is that after we went out for a celebratory dinner, we came back to the house, and I was just about to leave for the night when we both collapsed.”
    “Collapsed from what?” I heard an ominous scraping noise coming from the living room. But I wasn’t willing to deal with it at that moment.
    “I don’t know,” he answered. “Something hit us very suddenly, because one minute we were fine, and the next, we were . . . like this. Here. And we couldn’t leave, so there was no one here but us for days.”
    “So, what did you die of?” The heck with Miss Manners. You could tiptoe around the word only so long. They were going to be dead a long time; Paul might as well