Ghouls Just Haunt to Have Fun

“No, we called the police when we realized that the only way I could have been slashed by that demon was because the knife that acts as the portal key was close by. The police are scouring the third floor, looking for it.”

  “Are they safe up there?” asked Knollenberg, eyeing me critically.

  “I hope so,” I said. “They wouldn’t let me tag along. MacDonald wants me to stay put.”

  “We’ll know if things go bad,” Gilley said dryly. “The screaming, running, and general pandemonium should alert us.”

  Knollenberg sank back wearily against the bar and eyed the stairs nervously.

  “Gil,” I said in an even tone. “Lay off, okay?”

  Gilley rolled his eyes and muttered, “I’m just saying we’ll know.”

  Heath got up from the couch and walked over to the bar. “I take it we’re through with the ghost hunting for the evening?”

  “Have a drink,” I urged. “And pass me one while you’re at it.”

  “What’s your poison?” asked Tony, wobbling on his feet.

  “I’ll take a beer. M.J.?”

  “Ditto,” I said.

  “Gimme a scotch,” said Gopher, getting up from the couch.

  About the time that everyone had downed their drink, MacDonald and a few guys in uniform came down from the third floor. “Any luck?” I asked the detective.

  “Nada,” he said. “We searched every single room and got squat.”

  “I was afraid of that.” I was beginning to feel that familiar chill along my spine.

  “So I guess you were wrong about the knife being nearby,” said MacDonald as he rubbed his face tiredly.

  “No,” I said quickly. “That knife was there, Detective, I swear. It’s just that whoever has it was on the move and likely has it hidden somewhere else by now.”

  MacDonald eyed me critically. “Someone besides you guys and the skeleton crew is here in the hotel?”

  “I believe so,” I said. “Which means that someone else has access to the hotel and is able to get in through the locked doors.”

  “Knollenberg,” MacDonald barked.

  “Yes, Detective?”

  “I’ll want a list of all your employees, current and recent past.”

  “How far back would you like to pull from?”

  “Two years should do it,” he said.

  Knollenberg got up from his bar stool. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” And he hurried away in the direction of his office.

  MacDonald eyed me after he’d gone. “Got a minute?”

  “I’ve got all night,” I said, motioning for Tony, the drunken bartender, to round me up another beer.

  “Cool,” said MacDonald. “Come over here and talk to me.”

  I grabbed the fresh beer and walked with MacDonald over to the steps on the other side of the mezzanine. “I know that Beckworth is probably paying you a lot of money to get rid of these ghosts,” he began.

  “He is,” I confirmed.

  “And I know that you take your work seriously,” he added.

  “I do.”

  “But I want you to consider pulling out and going home.”

  That surprised me. “Come again?”

  MacDonald looked around warily. “I’ve never liked this old hotel,” he confessed. “I came here once for a wedding and ended up getting a room. I swear something or someone stared at me the entire night.”

  “Do you know if you were on the fifth floor?” I asked.

  MacDonald blinked. “You know,” he said, “I think I was!”

  I shrugged my shoulders and took a pull from the beer. “Gus,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Gus. He’s a ghostie in residence here. He was watching you.”

  MacDonald shivered. “Anyway,” he said, squaring his shoulders, “when we were upstairs looking through all the rooms on the third floor, we all felt this really nasty vibe. I think this hotel is bad news, M.J. I think that you guys should forget about this place and go home.”

  “Can’t,” I said with a sigh. “We made a deal with Beckworth, and it was for a lot of money, Detective. Besides, I’ve never walked away from a job where innocent people stood to get hurt if I didn’t do something. And I won’t let this hotel be my first.”

  MacDonald pointed to my shin. “What if that keeps happening?”

  “Well,” I said, also looking down, “there’s not much I can do about it until someone recovers that knife.”

  “Yeah,” said MacDonald, “about that. I may know something that could give us some answers.”

  “What?”

  “Do you remember when you told me that you thought it was weird that there were two women with international connections that I was investigating?”

  I scratched my forehead and said, “Vaguely.”

  “Turns out there was more of a connection than we first thought. I’d read in Sophie’s profile that she worked for an insurance company in London. Do you want to know which one?”

  “It’s going to mean something to me?”

  “It might,” he replied. “She worked for Lloyd’s of London, and you’ll never guess what her title was.”

  I stared at him blankly. “Adjuster?” I couldn’t figure out what he was getting at.

  “Investigator,” he said, bouncing his eyebrows.

  I swirled this information around in my head, but I wasn’t picking up what MacDonald was trying to lay down. “Huh?”

  “Sophie was an investigator with Lloyd’s of London. She specialized in stolen art and artifacts, often posing as a fence to recover the fleeced property.”

  My brain latched onto the meaning now. “Whoa,” I said. “That woman in Germany . . . what was her name?”

  “Faline Schufthauser.”

  “Yeah, her . . . she was an art thief, right?”

  “Now you’re getting it.”

  “So Sophie was . . . what? Here looking for Faline? Or something she’d stolen?”

  MacDonald rubbed his face again. “Hopefully I’ll know that tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve requested from her boss a list of the items assigned to her. I’m just waiting on them to e-mail it to me.”

  “So maybe this knife was stolen by Faline,” I said, continuing to follow the thought. “Maybe whoever used it found it lying around her place and used it to kill her!”

  “It might have gone down that way,” he said.

  “And maybe Sophie was trying to recover the knife for someone’s collection!”

  “Could be.”

  “Did Sophie know that Faline was dead?” I asked, finding the flaw in my argument.

  “If that’s who she was investigating, she sure as hell should have. I mean, it made national headlines in Germany.”

  “And what does all this have to do with Tracy?” I asked, failing to see how things linked back to her.

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” said MacDonald, getting up to stretch his back.

  I sighed. “Your work is a bitch,” I told him.

  “And yours is a piece of cake, right?” he said with a smile as he held out his hand to give me a lift from the stair I was sitting on.

  “Good point.”

  “What do you guys plan to do now?” he asked.

  I held the half-empty beer up in front of him. “We’re calling it a night for now, but we’ll go back at it tomorrow as soon as it’s dark.”

  MacDonald eyed me the way your dad does when he really wants to forbid you to do something, but knows that he’ll lose that battle. “Be careful, okay?”

  I saluted him. “Yes, sir.”

  He rolled his eyes and left it at that.

  The sun was just coming up when we finally wrapped up our drinking binge. I was feeling mighty good when Gil suggested we all go out for breakfast. We invited Knollenberg along—the poor guy had been holed up in his office since he’d arrived at three a.m.—but he declined.

  We found a taxi and asked the driver to take us to the best greasy spoon around, and were dropped off at Curl
y’s Coffee House. We trooped in like drunken sailors and plopped down in a big booth.

  After ordering a plate of corned-beef hash and eggs (which I crave only when I’m tipsy), I began a discussion with the rest of the group to see where their heads were as far as continuing the hunt.

  “I’m in,” said Heath.

  “You know I’m in, M.J.,” said Gil, and I knew that as long as he could wear his commando outfit with all its pockets full of magnets he’d be okay.

  “I’m in,” said Gopher, which surprised the hell out of me, and I began to have a little more respect for our producer.

  “I’m out,” said Tony.

  No surprise there.

  “Aw, come on, buddy,” pleaded Gopher. “Stay on with us.”

  “No way, no how, Goph,” Tony said, holding up the backpack he’d brought with him, which held all his stuff, and I knew there was no changing his mind, especially now that he was beginning to sober up a bit. “I only stuck around until now because it was the middle of the night. But after breakfast I’m heading straight to the airport. I never want to set foot in that hotel again!”

  Gopher opened his mouth to argue, but I cut him off. “Let it go,” I said softly. “This stuff isn’t for everybody, Gopher, and Tony came up against something really terrifying last night. I don’t blame him for wanting out.”

  Gopher scowled but let it go.

  When it looked like the argument had been dropped, I continued with, “We’ll need to talk strategy. Gil, we’re through with teams. From now on the three of us will stick together like glue. Gopher, you can continue to film, and I’m going to give you a crystal to carry in your pocket. It should help if anyone tries to take you over again.”

  “Shouldn’t I just wear some magnets, like Gilley?” he said.

  I shook my head. “That’s going to screw with our ability to talk to these ghosts,” I said. “The crystal will do the trick; don’t worry.”

  “And how should we try to protect ourselves?” asked Heath. “Clearly what we’re doing isn’t working very well.”

  “I think that one of us should be on point with the entity we’re trying to contact. And what I mean by that is that while you’re focused on talking to, say, Gus, I’m going to be feeling out the ether for any nasties so that we’ll have ample warning and can get to our grenades quickly.”

  “That works,” Heath agreed. “As long as someone’s got my back, I’m all for continuing on.”

  “I think we should also put some of the extra meters in those areas where you’ll be continuing the bust,” suggested Gilley. “That way I’ll be able to warn you ahead of time if you’re about to walk into a hot zone.”

  “Great,” I said. “We can lay those out today before we crash.”

  “And what do we do if I’m unable to get Gus and the other ghosts across to the other side?” Heath asked.

  “We tag the other partner and let them have a crack,” I replied with a smile as my eggs and hash arrived. “Just like wrestling.”

  “So we start with Gus on the fifth floor then?” Heath said.

  I pulled out from my pocket the list of spirits we were tackling and eyeballed it. “Yep. We start with him; then I say we move down to the dining hall. Let’s check out that woman in the mirror too while we’re there, and that’ll put Carol Mustgrove last.”

  Gilley was jotting this down on a pad of paper he’d brought with him. Looking up after scribbling, he said, “Which mirror are we going to focus on?”

  “The one in the Renaissance Room. We can’t get into the one located in the ladies’ room—remember?”

  Gilley looked at me blankly.

  “It’s sealed off by the crime-scene tape,” Heath reminded him.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Cool.”

  We all ate in silence for a bit before Gopher asked, “Do you think you’ll be able to get all the spirits over in one night?”

  I chewed my food before I answered. The hash was delightfully salty, just the way my tipsy self liked it. “I hope so. That’s the aim, at least, and if we can manage it, that will leave us with one final night to deal with the demon.”

  “How are we even going to find it?” Gopher said. “I mean, if that thing is on the move, isn’t it going to be tough to pin down?”

  I looked at my plate and didn’t answer him right away, and I could feel all eyes focus on me. Finally I said, “We’ll catch it the same way you catch any predator.”

  “How’s that?” Heath wondered.

  “By setting up some bait.”

  The boys all looked around the table at one another as if to say, Not it!

  I held back a smile and said, “I’ll be the bait. But, Heath, I’ll need you nearby.”

  Gilley didn’t look happy. “Is that your entire plan? You’re going to set yourself up as a lure and hope that this thing comes after you?”

  “Pretty much,” I told him. “I mean, I’m still working out the logistics and all, but it’s about the only thing we can do.”

  “But how are you going to fight it when it shows up?” Gil complained. “M.J., that thing is tied to a portable portal! We’ll need to find the key, and by key I mean knife, and by knife I mean murder weapon, and by murder weapon I mean murderer; and by that I mean, Are you insane?!”

  I flung my hands up in surrender. “Then what would you suggest, Gil?”

  Gilley opened his mouth to say something, but nothing other than, “eh . . . ah . . . er . . .” came out.

  “That’s what I thought,” I said. “We’ve got no choice, when you think about it. We’ve got to try, and hope for the best.”

  I noticed then that most of the men had stopped eating. It appeared I’d ruined their appetites. “Anyway,” I continued, “we’ve still got a day to work it out. Maybe another idea will come to me, and we can go with that instead.”

  “Oh, if only,” said Gilley dryly.

  I polished off the last of my breakfast and pushed my plate away, giving in to the huge yawn that indicated I was more tired than I’d thought. Reaching for my purse and pulling out some cash, I said, “Let’s all head back to the hotel, set up those gauges, and get some decent shut-eye. This feels like it’s going to be a long night, fellas.”

  Back at the hotel Gopher asked Knollenberg if he could change rooms to something a little closer to the ground floor and was given the key card to a room on the first floor. Gilley and I thought that was a brilliant idea, as it would keep us all close to the action and less spread out, so we also asked for new rooms near Heath and Gopher and got them.

  As I was waiting for Knollenberg to assign me a new room, I had the chance to ask him about the mirrors that Beckworth had purchased at auction. “I’m so sorry,” he said while his fingers tapped on the computer. “I haven’t had a chance to ask Mr. Beckworth about that yet.”

  “It’s okay,” I reassured him. Wanting to take it easy on the guy, but needing that information, I pressed, “Can you please remember to ask him the very next time you speak to him?”

  “Of course,” said Knollenberg with a blush.

  “Oh!” I said, thinking of something else. “And would you happen to know about a man who committed suicide here in the early nineteen hundreds?”

  Knollenberg hit one final key on his computer and gave me a small smile. “No, that was a little bit before my time.”

  I laughed. He’d said it so dryly that it was unexpectedly funny. “I understand that,” I said, still giggling. “Do any of your hotel records go that far back?”

  “I can check,” he offered. “But you might also find some information in the archives of the local newspaper.”

  “That’s a great idea,” I said. “I’ll get Gilley right on it.”

  Once Knollenberg assigned me my new room, I went up to my room to pack and move my stuff down a few floors. I saw Gilley just coming out of his new room as I was making my way down the first-floor hallway. “Hey,” I said.

  “What room are you in?” he asked me.
r />   “The one right next to yours,” I said, stopping to eyeball the brass plates. “By the way, I have an assignment for you, and I need you to look it up before tonight.”

  Gilley yawned dramatically. “Oh, yippee,” he said drolly.

  I ignored his sarcasm. “Can you look into the on-line archival records of the local newspapers to see if there’s an account of a man with the first name of Gus who committed suicide here at the hotel in the early nineteen hundreds?”

  “That shouldn’t be too hard. Sure,” he said. “I’ll look it up.”

  “Great!” I gave him a pat on the back. “Print off anything you can find.”

  “What time will you be rising and shining?” he asked as I made my way through my door.

  I glanced down at my watch. “I’ll probably get up around two and go for a run. Want to grab a bite to eat around four?”

  “We’ll need to set out the extra electrostatic meters,” he reminded me.

  “Oh, crap,” I said, pausing in the doorway. “I forgot. Okay, then we’ll place the meters at four and eat around five.”

  “Did you want to get started before midnight?”

  “Might as well,” I said. “That sky looks like rain, and if it starts pouring, then we can start anytime we’re ready.”

  “Thank God for rainy days,” said Gil. (Ghost hunting is best when the atmosphere is damp.)

  “Cool, see you at four.”

  I slept until about two thirty, then went for a run, which was tougher than I thought on the slopes and hills of San Francisco. I made it back to the hotel by three fifteen, showered, and met Gil in the mezzanine by four to set up the electrostatic meters—which, thank God, we had plenty of.

  “Do we want to put these only on the floors we’re going to be working?” Gil asked me.

  “How many do we have?”

  Gilley looked into his duffel bag. “Eight,” he said.

  “We have that many?”

  “You know how fritzy they can be,” he reminded me, referring to how easily the meters tended to short out. “I wanted to make sure we were well stocked for this gig.”

  “I think it’s a good idea to put them in all the places we’ll be working, plus maybe a few in the higher-traffic areas, like down here on the ground floor.”