Ghouls Just Haunt to Have Fun

  Crenshaw frowned. “I see. And what about those bruises on your neck?” he asked, pointing at them.

  “Well, you see, sir, when all hell broke loose up there, it was pretty confusing, and there were four of us in a small room with the lights off. I’m pretty sure I got injured by your suspect and certainly not by Detective MacDonald. So of course I won’t be pressing charges, and you may take that as my statement.”

  Crenshaw’s face—which comprised a bulldog’s jowls and a Doberman’s intense stare—was unreadable for several long seconds. Finally, however, he shrugged and waved at MacDonald, who was standing by a group of uniforms, looking for all the world like a rejected puppy. “MacDonald!” Crenshaw barked. “You’re in the clear here, and I want you back on this case. I’m putting you in charge, so don’t screw it up again.” Then he announced, “I’m going back to bed.”

  MacDonald jumped, staring first at his lieutenant, then at me. I gave him a big, fat smile to reassure him we were still friends, and he seemed to relax. “Yes, sir,” he said. “On it, sir!”

  The rest of the morning was spent watching the techs and police come and go and getting pieces of the puzzle from MacDonald, who filled us in when no one was looking. It turned out that the assistant manager, whose alias had been Joe Fresco, had been hired just one month prior to Anton, and it was Joe who had vouched for Anton to Knollenberg. Knollenberg had only called the most recent employer on Anton’s résumé, a hotel in Berlin, which checked out, and Joe was able to convince his GM that Anton would be a perfect fit for the Duke.

  Joe and Anton had indeed been longtime partners, their career in crime dating back a decade, when they teamed up to work as valets at a popular hotel in Paris and fleeced the hotel guests of any loose change and valuables they kept in their cars. The pair eventually worked their way up and became part of the hotel management. They had a long history of working for short stints at several of Europe’s finest hotels, where they established a pattern of stealing from the hotel guests and blaming it on housekeeping.

  It was while he was working in one of these hotels that Anton had met Faline, and those two moved on to bigger and better heists, but Anton and Joe continued to keep in touch. When Anton found that his girlfriend was ready to turn him in, he’d called on his old friend Joe to help him secure an alibi for her murder and dispose of the stolen mirrors.

  It was Sophie who’d done most of this detective work on Joe and Anton’s background, and she’d meticulously documented all of this on the flash drive stolen from her room and found in Joe’s hotel locker.

  During her investigation, Sophie had discovered that Joe and Anton had come up with the plan to spray-paint the mirror frames with an antique gold enamel to disguise their value; then the pair set up an estate sale and sent an invitation to Mr. Beckworth, who was known to attend such functions. The mirrors were attractively priced, and Beckworth took the bait, purchasing the mirrors for a fraction of their real value and unwittingly assisting Joe and Anton by getting the mirrors safely through customs and out of Europe. Joe had then followed Beckworth and the mirrors to the Duke and was able to land himself a job almost immediately. Two months later, Anton joined him and the pair kept a close eye on the merchandise until the international heat died down.

  When Anton learned that Lloyd’s was going to settle the insurance claim by the wealthy Turk whose collection they had stolen from, the pair figured the mirrors were safe to remove from the hotel, and had even made local arrangements to melt down the gold. But Sophie showed up just as they were about to follow through with their plans, and she nearly ruined everything. When she was taken care of, the pair then had to wait for an opportunity to remove the mirrors and get out of town fast, but our group kept making it difficult for them.

  Still, through persistence they had actually been able to take down the mirrors one by one and hide them in the perfect spot, room 321—a place where no one was allowed to enter, and where Anton and Joe felt the priceless bounty would be safe until the smoke cleared.

  However, Oruç’s dagger and its influence over Anton kept botching things and making it difficult for him to make a clean getaway. It seems its dark influence had exerted quite a bit of control over Anton, who’d grown very unpredictable with it in his possession. He’d murdered Faline with it when he discovered she’d been in contact with Sophie, and it’d been Joe who’d managed to get the knife back by paying off one of the German police clerks. Anton had then smuggled the knife into the U.S., and he and Joe had argued about getting rid of it—that was the fight Steven and I heard out in our hallway the night we arrived.

  Anton truly believed the dagger had special powers, however, and to prove to him that it was nothing more than an old relic, Joe had sneaked it onto the table during our television shoot when no one was looking. The dailies that Gopher had reviewed while Gilley was following Knollenberg (who’d actually gone to the kitchen to make himself a sandwich) had captured Anton and Joe coming in to watch the shoot, then a blurry few seconds of Joe near our table removing the dagger from his blazer.

  To this day we’re not sure which one of them killed Tracy. We suspect that one of the pair had been in the ladies’ room scoping out the miror when Tracy walked in and recognized either Joe or Anton as having been on the set. Either way, we’re pretty convinced it was just a case of wrong place, wrong time for the poor girl.

  If it was Anton who was turning darker by the minute because he’d been so attached to the evil of that awful dagger, then he got what he deserved. Joe killed him either because he was sick of the liability that Anton was constantly creating, or because he got greedy. He never did confess.

  In the end MacDonald was able to get him for the stolen mirrors, which had his fingerprints all over them, and for Sophie’s murder. The flash drive taken from her room and his lone thumbprint found on her suitcase placed him there at the time of her murder. And because MacDonald had other evidence to rely upon to convict Joe and send him to jail for a very long time, he actually took a huge risk when he passed me something wrapped in newspaper shortly after his lieutenant left. When I peeked under the flaps of newsprint I was shocked to discover the dagger and the magnetic spike from the grenade.

  “I can’t let it near the techs,” MacDonald explained. “I taped that spike to it, but there’s no way that thing should be making its rounds at the crime lab, or anyplace else where innocent people might gather.”

  I was stunned. Not only could MacDonald lose his job for this, he could very well be brought up on criminal charges for obstruction. I closed the newspaper over the dagger and said, “Thanks, Ayden. I’ll make sure this thing never sees the light of day again.”

  “I’d appreciate it,” he said. “And can I ask you something?”

  “Sure,” I said, leaning back in the chair I was sitting on, weary down to my bones.

  “How did you get me to come back?”

  “You mean how did I get Oruç to let you go?” I said, knowing that MacDonald was talking about the point when he was strangling me. “I turned on the microwave,” I said.

  MacDonald blinked a few times, clearly not understanding. “Huh?” he said.

  “Microwaves have two really powerful magnets,” I said. “When you turn the oven on, you activate the magnets. Anything sensitive to a magnetic field within ten to fifteen feet of the microwave would be affected when it’s turned on.”

  “Ahhh,” said MacDonald. “Well, thank God for that, huh?”

  “You ain’t kidding,” I said with a smile.

  “Again, M.J.,” he said soberly, “I’m really, really sorry.”

  I laid my hand on his. “It wasn’t you,” I reassured him. “So there’s no need to apologize.”

  At that moment Heath came over and sat down next to me. “I was just upstairs,” he said, a small smile forming on his lips.

  “Oh, yeah?” I said.

  “On the third floor.”

  “How come?” I asked.

  “Carol. She actually
came down here and tapped me on the shoulder. When I followed her upstairs, she said she’s had enough of all this racket and wanted to know how she could cross over so that she could get a little peace and quiet.”

  I laughed heartily for the first time in days. “That’s a new one!” I said. “So she’s gone?”

  “She is.”

  “Sweet,” I said, then turned to MacDonald. “Have the mirrors been taken away?”

  “They’re in the evidence van outside,” he said.

  “Can I have ten minutes with them?”

  “You thinking about Odolina?”

  “I am,” I said, then turned to Heath. “You up for one final bust?”

  “Bring it on,” he said, and we followed after Ayden outside.

  Three weeks later our checks arrived: one for twenty thousand from Mr. Beckworth and one for five thousand from Gopher. I convinced Gilley to let me give most of it to Steven, who promptly tore up my personal check to him. “I don’t need this money,” he insisted. “You do.”

  My heart went all mushy as I stared across my desk at him. “You know . . .” I said, finding it hard to form the words.

  “Yes,” he said gravely, “you love me. You can’t live without me. Life would not be worth living without me. You say it too much, and I’m tired of hearing it.”

  I laughed. For the record, none of those words had ever crossed my lips, and I suddenly wondered what I’d been waiting for. I got up from my desk and came around to sit on his lap. Crossing my arms behind his neck and looking into his eyes, I whispered, “Steven . . .”

  “Yes?”

  I opened my mouth, ready to really pour my heart out, when the door to my office banged open and Gilley burst inside.

  “Ohmigod you are not going to believe it!” he squealed, before noticing our rather intimate position. “Jeez, you guys, get a room.”

  I cleared my throat and got up from Steven’s lap. “Do you ever think to knock?” I knew full well that Gilley never thought about something like that . . . ever.

  “Whatever,” he said dismissively, then got to his point. “I just got off the phone with Gopher,” he said. “And you are not going to believe what he had to say!”

  I sat back in my chair and sighed. Anytime Gilley began with a line like that, it was never good for me. I waved my fingers at him. “Spill it.”

  “Gopher’s shown the footage of our busts from the hotel, and I guess the bigwigs at Bravo are so impressed that they want to give you and Heath your very own show!”

  Gilley was hopping up and down with excitement, and my jaw fell open. Before I had a chance to even react our phone rang. “That’s Heath!” Gilley said, punching the speaker button. “Hello?” he said, while I blinked hard and tried to take in the dizzying pace of these unfolding events.

  “Gil?”

  “Hi, Heath!” Gilley sang. “I’m here with M.J. and Steven.”

  “Did you hear the news?”

  “I did!” said Gilley with enthusiasm. “Just got off the phone with Gopher. Are you in?”

  “For that kind of money? Hell, yeah!”

  “What kind of money?” I asked.

  “Ten thousand dollars per episode!” Gilley yelled.

  In the corner Doc squawked. “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!”

  “Whoa!” I said, and held up my hand, wanting everyone in the room to slow the hell down. “Gilley,” I said sternly, “as usual, this is the first I’m hearing of this. Why haven’t you told me about this before?”

  “M.J.,” Gil said patiently as he took a seat next to Steven, “I’m in charge of business development, and this whole thing fell under that category until we got the green light. And now that we have it, I can inform the talent!”

  I nodded and pursed my lips. “I’m assuming I’m the talent?”

  Gilley flashed me a big, toothy grin. “You are, indeedy!”

  “So what’s this show about? Is it a camera crew following us on ghost hunts?”

  There was a palpable silence that followed, and I was immediately concerned.

  “Sort of,” Gil finally said, and his voice got that squeaky quality that told me there was much more to this, and that I wasn’t going to like it at all.

  I looked at the phone, hoping for a straight answer. “Heath? Want to fill me in?”

  “The show is called Ghoul Getters,” he said. “As I understand it, the production crew is researching reports of particularly nasty poltergeist activity where they think something much stronger and more dangerous than your average ghost haunting is taking place. You and I will visit these locations and do our thing.”

  My eyes flashed over to the safe in the corner of my office, the interior of which was packed with magnets and one cigar box, which held a certain dagger and a portal to the lower realms. I didn’t immediately respond, so Gilley chimed in with, “Think of it, M.J.! If you do just twelve episodes, your condo could be paid off!”

  “I won’t do it if M.J.’s not on board,” Heath said through the speaker, and I realized that I held not only my own financial future in my decision but his as well.

  My eyes roved to Steven.

  “I would rather you didn’t,” he said softly, “but only because I worry about you and don’t want anything bad to happen. But I must admit that having Heath on your back makes me feel better about this offer.”

  I smiled as the picture of Heath on my back formed in my mind. I closed my eyes and thought for long seconds, weighing the pros and cons. Finally I said, “Okay.”

  Gilley squealed loud enough for Doc to flutter nervously about his cage. “Really?” My partner giggled. “You’ll really do it?”

  “On a trial basis,” I cautioned, and leaned in to look directly at Gilley so that he couldn’t misunderstand. “The moment this gets too dangerous or I feel our safety is being compromised for ratings, we’re done. I want an open-ended contract, Gil, with that as part of the escape clause, or no deal.”

  Gilley didn’t look happy, but he nodded. “Got it,” he said.

  “And I want fifteen thousand per episode,” I said, feeling rather ballsy.

  Both Gilley’s and Steven’s eyebrows rose. “Really?” Gil said.

  “Really. They’ll probably give us twelve-five—but if we don’t ask for more money, then we look weak.”

  “Got it. Anything else?”

  “Heath and I approve all locations beforehand. No dumping us in the middle of nowhere without any knowledge of what we’re up against—especially if the activity we’re fighting is that combative.”

  “Done,” said Gil. “Anything else?”

  I smiled and sat back in my chair. “I’m good. Heath? Anything on your end that you want?”

  “I think you’ve covered it,” he said.

  “Great. Gil, go make your call.”

  We hung up with Heath, and Gilley rushed out of the room to telephone Gopher. When all was quiet again I got up, rounded the desk, locked the door, and took my place back on Steven’s lap. “Now,” I said softly, stroking his hair. “Where were we?”

  Read on for a sneak peek at

  Victoria Laurie’s next Ghost Hunter Mystery,

  GHOULS GONE WILD

  Coming soon from Obsidian.

  I’m not really put off by the skeptics out there—people who believe that, for someone like me to call herself a psychic medium, I must be a fraud. They see me sitting across from a client, struggling to come up with the name of a deceased loved one or a relevant, specific detail related to that loved one, and it’s easy to believe I’m making the whole thing up.

  But they don’t know what I know. They don’t feel what I feel. They don’t hear what I hear or see what I see. And they never will. Well, at least until they cross over, of course.

  One of the best readings I have ever done was for a woman who had just lost her father—and by “just,” I mean earlier that very morning. When she came to me, desperate to know that her dad was okay, I took pity on her and fit her into my schedule right a
way. When I sat down, her father came through immediately, and all he kept saying was, “Holy cow! This stuff is real!”

  Turns out that for seventy years he’d been the biggest, loudest atheist you’d ever want to meet and was convinced that people like me were charlatans. So imagine how surprised he was when he died and discovered a whole new world—literally.

  And really, because of that experience, I no longer worry about the snarky little side comments I get from folks who think what I do is a big charade. They just don’t get it, and maybe they’re not supposed to until they too drift off into that great night.

  But none of that is going to slow me down or even give me pause. There’s way too much work to do for me to linger on what other people think.

  I’ve got my regular work as a medium—connecting the living with their deceased loved ones—and my other job as a ghostbuster for a brand-new cable TV show.

  It seems that there’s a growing fascination among television audiences to understand things that go bump in the night. And, truthfully, our world is chock-full of those poor souls who haven’t made it across yet. I’m talking about grounded spirits, better known to most as ghosts. There are millions and millions of them out there, wandering aimlessly about, and some places are more heavily populated than others.

  Take Europe, for example. You can’t walk a mile anywhere on that continent without bumping into a ghosty or two—they’re everywhere. Which is why our production company wanted my two partners and me to trek some three thousand miles across the pond to do a little ghostbusting for must-see TV.

  Gilley and Heath—said partners—were really geeked about the idea. But I wasn’t so keen, mostly because of who I’d be leaving behind.

  My sweetheart, Steven, would have to stay in Boston and work, plus my beloved bird, Doc, would have to be looked after by a trusted friend. Doc and I have been together for more than twenty years, and in all that time we’ve never spent longer than a week apart. The show’s filming schedule had us out of town for the next six to eight weeks. Which is what had me so glum about the prospect of leaving. And it must have been obvious, because as I sat in my office waiting for a client, Gilley came bounding in, took one look at me, and said, “Don’t pout, M.J. You’ll develop frown lines.”