Ghouls Just Haunt to Have Fun

  “Whoa,” I said as I sifted through the pages, and felt Heath lean in to look over my shoulder.

  “You’ve kept track of each and every one?” he said.

  “We have,” said Knollenberg. “All of the previous owners, including Mr. Beckworth, insisted on it.”

  “Why?” I asked, looking up at him.

  “Liability,” said Knollenberg. “It’s a litigious world, I’m afraid.”

  I didn’t really know why it was important to catalog ghost sightings for liability reasons. I mean, what kind of lawsuit could be brought about by a ghost sighting? But I didn’t question it. I was too happy to have found such a treasure trove of detail.

  Lots of the complaints were eerily similar in both use of wording and description of the event. The most common one was about a small girl playing on the staircase, and concerned guests worrying over her safety.

  Others referred to an older gentleman in “period costume” calling for his daughter, Sara.

  Many of the accounts I had already heard or read about, beginning with a woman in a gray dress on the top floor knocking on doors at three a.m., asking if guests needed their beds turned down. A friendly bellhop who opened doors for guests, then promptly disappeared. A dark shadow appearing at the foot of the bed in room 518. Yet another complaint talked of the closet door constantly being opened and closed, along with faucets turning on and off by themselves, in room 420.

  Still another set of accounts told of guests being touched by unseen hands in what used to be the dining hall and was now one of the largest conference halls, the Stargaze Room. And, of course, the suicidal woman I’d seen on my balcony, Carol Mustgrove from room 321.

  I looked down at the list in front of us and said, “The woman on the top floor who knocks on doors hasn’t been seen since 1984?”

  “That’s correct. No one has reported her since then,” he confirmed.

  “She’s probably gotten across, then,” said Heath.

  I nodded in agreement. “We’ll do a spot check just in case.” I then frowned as I thought about that friendly bellhop. “Mr. Knollenberg,” I said, regarding the manager thoughtfully, “didn’t you say you knew this bellhop who died and appears to be sticking around?”

  Knollenberg nodded, his eyes taking on a faraway cast. “Mickey O’Reilly,” he said. “He was a sweet old guy. He worked here into his eighties, you know. He loved the Duke, and we all knew something had happened when he didn’t show up for his shift right before Christmas. Mickey never missed work.”

  “Have you seen his ghost?”

  Knollenberg shook his head. “No. But not a week goes by that one of my other bellhops doesn’t tell me Mickey’s at it again. He’s especially known for holding the door open for pretty ladies. We had Brad and Angelina here recently, and we’re pretty sure Mickey held the door open for Miss Jolie, because one of the check-in clerks told me that she wanted to tip the sweet old man out front, but she couldn’t seem to find him to give him her thanks. At that time no one over the age of twenty-five was working the door.”

  I smiled and asked delicately, “Is it all right with you if, as long as he isn’t scaring anyone, we leave him as he is to open the doors? It just seems to me that Mickey got a lot of enjoyment out of his job, and I don’t think he’s here because he doesn’t know he’s died so much as he’s formed a very strong attachment to the Duke, and I’d hate to force him to give that up.”

  “Er . . .” said Knollenberg. “I guess. As long as you don’t think he’s suffering or anything.”

  “I really don’t,” I said gently. “Still, I’ll try to check in with him just to be sure.”

  “Okay,” Knollenberg agreed.

  Heath was also studying the list, and he asked the general manager, “What about the lady in the mirror?”

  I’d forgotten about the woman whom both Heath and I had seen in the mirrors of the Renaissance Room and the bathroom.

  “What lady in what mirror?” Murray asked.

  Heath and I exchanged a glance, and I explained. “We both saw a beautiful young woman with long black hair in two of the mirrors you have here at the hotel.”

  Knollenberg looked completely puzzled. “What mirrors?”

  “The one in the Renaissance Room and the one above the sink in the ladies’ restroom,” I told him.

  Knollenberg continued to look at me blankly. “Those mirrors are new,” he said. “Mr. Beckworth purchased a set of four of them at auction. We’ve put them in several areas of the hotel.”

  “Well, there seems to be a spirit who’s very attached to them,” I said.

  “Do you mean to tell me that we’ve acquired yet another ghost here that we haven’t heard of before?” He gasped.

  “ ’Fraid so,” I said. “Can you tell me where the other two mirrors are?”

  “One is by the elevators on the ground floor, and the last one I believe is on the third floor.”

  A chill went up my spine, and I looked at Heath. “The vestibule with the elevator is where we encountered that wicked powerful serpent, remember?” I said to Heath.

  He nodded gravely. “I’m seeing a pattern,” he said.

  “A pattern?” asked Knollenberg.

  But I ignored his question and asked him instead, “Where did you say those mirrors came from?”

  “Mr. Beckworth brought them back from his most recent trip to Europe. He said he bought them at an auction and thought they would go perfectly here at the Duke.”

  “Do you know anything more about them? Where they originated? Who might have owned them previously?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “But I can certainly ask Mr. Beckworth.”

  “Please do,” I encouraged. I knew it was more than a mere coincidence that the mirrors were new and so was all of this violent poltergeist activity. I strongly suspected that there was a link.

  We left the general manager ’s office shortly thereafter armed with a list of the spooks we’d have to tackle and our floor plans. Heath and I decided to get a drink and talk strategy. I texted Gilley to see if he wanted to join us, but he sent back a message that he, Tony, and Gopher were still testing out the reception of the monitors, cameras, electrostatic meters, and walkie-talkies, and that Heath and I should just fill him in later about how we planned to tackle the bust.

  So Heath and I headed next door to the restaurant again. After we’d taken a seat at the bar and given our drink orders to the bartender, I pulled out the list, along with copies of the hotel’s floor plans, and spread them out on the bar. I then began to cross-reference with the sightings documented in Knollenberg’s files and came up with the areas within the hotel where we’d need to concentrate. “If we focus on these hot spots and take care of the easier ghosties first, we’ll have more time to deal with the more negative energies.”

  “Okay,” Heath said, “I’ll go with that. Where did you want to start?”

  I circled the top floor. “Here,” I said.

  “The woman in gray?”

  I nodded. “And I think we should split up.” Heath looked at me doubtfully, so I explained. “With these easier spirits we might as well tackle them on our own, and you did such a great job getting little Sara across, I’m confident you can do the same for a few of these other ones.”

  “And if the gray lady has already gotten herself across?” he asked, likely remembering that the last sighting had been well over twenty years ago.

  “Then you can move to room five-eighteen.”

  “What’s in there again?”

  “A dark shadow hovering at the foot of the bed.”

  “Great, a dark shadow. Those spirits always creep me out,” he admitted. “I mean, what’s up with the shadow form anyway?”

  “It’s easier to maintain,” I said with a smile. “Full form is much more difficult and uses up a ton of energy.”

  “Ah,” said Heath. “Okay, then. I’ll tackle the lady in gray, then the shadow guy. Where’re you going to be?”

  “If yo
u’re working from the top down, I’ll work from the bottom up. My first target is going to be Mr. Duke; I want to get him to his daughter pronto. Then I’ll tackle the handsy ghost in the Stargaze Room.”

  Heath was quiet, so I glanced over at him and saw that he looked a bit apprehensive. “What’s up?” I asked.

  “I don’t know that I’m in love with the idea of going it alone,” he said. “I mean, that demon thing could be anywhere.”

  I smiled, really understanding how hard it was for even a medium to tackle ghost hunting alone. “I forgot to mention that we’ll both be connected to Gilley via our cameras, walkie-talkies and instruments, and we’ll both have a cameraman in tow.”

  “How is that going to help me?” he asked, arching a skeptical eyebrow.

  I laughed wickedly and told him, “If anything big and smoky jumps out at you, throw the cameraman at it and run like hell!”

  Heath chuckled heartily and winked at me. “Now, there’s a plan!”

  “Seriously, though,” I said, getting back to the business at hand. “You’ll be carrying a couple of our magnet grenades, and the moment you pull the cap off one of those babies no poltergeist is going to want to come near you.”

  “Are you sure they work?” he asked me.

  I pumped my head up and down. “Absolutely positive,” I said. “I’ve used them against one of the nastiest spooks I’ve ever dealt with, and it shut his ass down but good.”

  “Something as bad as that demon from the knife?”

  “Okay,” I said, conceding his point. “Maybe not that bad, but still, it was enough to convince me that in a pinch they really work.”

  Heath and I worked out the rest of the details for the ghost hunt, agreeing that we’d take the first night to work on getting rid of the easier ghosts, which would leave us with the next two nights free to work on the more difficult ones.

  We also both agreed that if any of the ghosts on our personal lists refused to move on, we would join up later and tackle them together. “What if even as a team we can’t get them across?” Heath asked. “I mean, have you ever tried to convince a suicide victim that they need to cross over? They usually put up a really good fight.”

  I knew he was talking about Carol Mustgrove. “You’re right,” I agreed. “Let’s tackle Carol together.”

  Heath then looked over at my paper and put a hand on my arm. “How are we going to work on her if we can’t get into her room?” he asked.

  I gave him a puzzled look, and he explained. “It’s a crime scene. I’m sure it’s still sealed.”

  “Oh, crap!” I said, slapping my forehead. “You’re right.” I thought on that for a beat or two, then said, “You know, she did come onto my balcony the other night. I’ll bet she’s been rattled by the mess that’s become of her room. As long as that room is sealed off by the police, no one’s allowed in to straighten things up.” I remembered the chaos of the crime scene in room 321 after Sophie had been murdered. “Which means that if Carol is upset about the mess, she’s going to be on the move, and maybe we can access her from my balcony or someplace else she might be hiding out.”

  “It’s worth a shot,” he agreed.

  “And if we can’t get to her, we can’t get to her. Technically Beckworth shouldn’t fault us if we’re unable to clear out Mustgrove. I mean, if we’re barred from access to the room she haunts there’s not much we can do.”

  “Right,” he said. “When do you want to start?”

  I glanced at my watch. It was half past five. “I think we should start right at midnight,” I said. “That’ll leave us with about five and a half to six hours of really good ghost hunting before dawn breaks and things get quiet again.”

  “Cool. What should we do until then?”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out some money. Laying it on the bar I said, “I’m going to go back to the hotel and fill Gilley in on our plan and give him a copy of the floor plans. Then I’m going to try to catch some shut-eye. If I were you I’d do the same, ’cause it’s going to be a long night and we’ll need to be fresh.”

  “Great,” Heath agreed. “I’ll meet you in the Twilight Room about eleven thirty, then?”

  “Perfect,” I said, and we left the restaurant.

  I found Gil back at the conference room talking to Gopher and Tony. From the looks of it, my partner was giving them each a lesson in using the thermal imager and electrostatic meters, and also from the looks of it, both men seemed to have caught on long before and were now suffering through Gilley’s extended lecture.

  “Your needle is going to bounce around a lot,” he was saying. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s something metaphysical happening. The trick is not to overanalyze it. You just need to keep your eye on the meter and your medium, and see if there are any weird measurements on your meters when M.J. or Heath gets a blip on their internal radar.”

  “Hi, guys!” I said from behind Gilley. “How’s it going?”

  “Swell,” said Gopher, but his voice couldn’t have been more monotone.

  “Hey, M.J.,” said Gilley. “Did you guys come up with a plan?”

  “We did,” I said, spreading our list of ghosts and the floor plans out on the table. “While Heath works from the top down, I’m going to work from the bottom up. We’re tackling the easier ghosts tonight and the tougher energies tomorrow.”

  “Super,” said Gil. “Tony’s going to follow you with the night-vision camera, and Gopher’s going to tag along behind Heath.”

  “That works,” I said, smiling at Tony, who looked really nervous about what he’d gotten himself into. “I’m going to catch some more Zs, and I told Heath that we’d start around midnight. Does that work for everyone?”

  Three heads nodded back at me, and Gilley said, “That’s about perfect.”

  I turned and headed for the door. “Great, I’ll see you all back here around eleven thirty.”

  I was just coming out of the hallway when I heard someone call my name. I looked over and saw Detective MacDonald entering from outside and waving at me. “Holliday!” he said, his voice echoing around the empty lobby. “Can I talk to you a sec?”

  “Sure,” I called back, and trotted over to him. We met in the seating area by the bar, and he and I sat down.

  “I hear you’re doing some sort of séance thing tonight,” he began.

  I laughed. “Not quite. We’ve been hired by the owner to do a ghostbust of the hotel.”

  “How many ghosts does this place have?” MacDonald asked, looking around as though he expected to see something jump out at him at any minute.

  “More than you might think,” I told him. “Are you here about Tracy’s murder?”

  “I think so,” he said, reaching into a folder he was carrying and holding out a picture to me. “Do you get anything off this?”

  I eyeballed the photo of a very pretty blonde with big green eyes and high cheekbones. She looked to be in her twenties, and radiating happiness, but I felt immediately that she was deceased. “She’s dead,” I said, staring at the photo intently.

  “She is,” he confirmed. “Can you tell me anything more?”

  “She died violently,” I said, and then a sound crept into my head and I said, “Does her name have a sh sound in it?”

  “Her last name does,” he said. “This is Faline Schufthauser. She was murdered two months ago in Strasburg, Germany. A knife matching the description of the one that killed Tracy was found in her chest, but was later lost or stolen out of evidence.”

  “The poor girl,” I said, staring down at her image and filtering through the impressions that I was getting off of her picture. Then something quite unusual floated through the ether to me, and I stared up at MacDonald in surprise. “Detective?” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “This is going to sound really weird,” I prefaced, “but was this girl a criminal?”

  MacDonald broke into a grin and shook his head back and forth in appreciation. “She was,” he
said. “You’re looking at one of Europe’s best and most elusive art thieves.”

  “Whoa,” I said. “She looks so innocent, doesn’t she?”

  “Which is why she was so good at it for so long,” said MacDonald. He then reached into the folder and pulled out a piece of paper. “Faline Schufthauser was born in Austria, educated in a Parisian art school, and, as far as Interpol can determine, began stealing expensive works of art right out of college. She spoke several languages, and because her parents were affluent she knew how to fit into the social scene of the rich and famous. She’s credited, or should I say suspected, in sixteen different robberies, but was never caught. She’d probably still be on the run if she hadn’t been murdered.”

  “How can you tell that she was killed by the same knife?” I asked.

  “Because luckily the Strasburg police got a few pictures of it before it went missing. When we plugged our own photos of the knife that killed Tracy into our database we got a possible international connection. I’m waiting on my techs to blow up the images from Germany, but so far, it really looks like they’re a match.”

  “So how does a knife from a murder in Europe find its way over here?” I asked.

  “It comes along with the murderer,” said MacDonald, and I felt my skin prickle with goose bumps.

  “Ah,” I said after a pause. “Yeah. That would work. Are there any leads on who might have killed Faline?”

  “Her ex-boyfriend was suspected at one point but was later cleared. Another theory is that one of the people she stole something from managed to track her down and get their revenge, but no one in any of the suspected robberies was anywhere near her at the time she was killed.”

  I handed the photo back to MacDonald. “This just gets weirder and weirder,” I said. “I mean, you’ve got two dead girls, both with international connections.”

  “Tracy has an international connection?” said MacDonald.

  I shook my head. “No, not her. I was talking about Sophie. You’re still working her case too, aren’t you?”

  MacDonald blinked at me as if I’d said something that stunned him. He then got up off the couch and abruptly announced, “I’ve got to get back to the station. I’ll talk to you later.” And with that he hurried out of the hotel.