Chance of a Ghost Read Online Free PDF Page B

out of my mouth. Suddenly there were new images I needed to get out of my head. “Ewwwww,” I groaned.
    “Don’t judge,” Jeannie laughed.
    “She’s my mother !”
    “Where do you think you came from, the J. Crew catalog?”
    “Jeannie!” I screamed. “Enough!”
    It was another ten minutes to my house in Harbor Haven, the hometown I’d returned to after my divorce from a guy we’ll call “The Swine,” strictly for the sake of accuracy. Nosnow was falling yet, but I wasn’t crazy about the prospect of it. I had guests back at the house, my daughter was being dropped off after school by her best friend’s mom and there were these two ghosts to manage.
    Perhaps I should explain.
    About a year ago, I’d bought the massive Victorian at 123 Seafront Avenue to turn into a guesthouse with money I’d gotten from divorcing The Swine and from settling a lawsuit (don’t ask). While I was renovating the place, an “accident” left me with a very bad bump on the head and the sudden ability to see the two spirits, Paul Harrison and Maxie Malone, who inhabited the house.
    They’d both died in the house about a year before I bought it—Maxie was the previous owner, and Paul, the newly minted private investigator who’d been hired to find out who was threatening her if she didn’t leave the house; threats that turned out to be serious when they were both poisoned—and though it took some doing, the three of us were able to find their killer. But despite our mutual expectations that Paul and Maxie would “go into the light” or whatever once their murders were solved, nothing much seemed to have changed in that regard. So we’ve had to figure out a way to coexist.
    Luckily, right around that same time, I was approached by a man named Edmund Rance, who represented a group called Senior Plus Tours, offering senior citizens vacations with an “added experience” attached. Rance had heard rumors that my guesthouse was haunted—which technically it is—and asked if we could provide evidence thereof at least twice a day in exchange for a steady supply of paying guests during the tourist season (which on the Jersey Shore is at least part of every season except winter, so I was surprised to have even two guests staying with me this week). I prevailed upon Paul, who in turn prevailed upon Maxie, to perform “spook shows,” making objects fly around the house and lately adding such touches as musical instruments “playingthemselves” and strange substances (usually rubber cement, sometimes corn syrup with food coloring) “bleed” down the walls.
    That’s entertainment.
    But Paul exacted a price for my exploitation of the two ghosts. He’d loved being a PI in life, and even now wanted to keep his hand in investigations—apparently eternity is, in addition to other things, boring—but he’d needed someone living (i.e., me) to do the “legwork.”
    There had been some negotiations, but I’d ultimately agreed to get a private-investigator’s license, and so far had used it twice already. I still wasn’t fully on board with the PI life, however—both those experiences had been, to put it mildly, a little unnerving for me. Getting your life threatened will do that to a person.
    But back to the problem of what was going on with Mom.
    “Okay, I’ll let you live your fantasy,” Jeannie answered me. “Your mother isn’t seeing some guy. So what’s your explanation for what you heard?”
    I couldn’t tell her that I was pretty sure Mom had been talking to a ghost. I mean, I could have told her that, but she wouldn’t have believed me, so it wasn’t going to get us anywhere.
    She took my momentary silence for capitulation. “Aha!” she shouted. “You agree with me that she has a boyfriend!”
    “No. I really don’t. I was just thinking that it doesn’t make sense for some guy to just walk into her house and wait in her bedroom.”
    “Why not?” Jeannie demanded.
    “Because Mom wouldn’t do that.