Ghouls Just Haunt to Have Fun Read Online Free PDF Page A

sort through some paperwork when someone came up behind her and hit her on the back of the head. The next thing she knew, she was out here on the driveway surrounded by police.”
    MacDonald turned and regarded one of the uniformed policemen behind him. “Stanslowski!” he called. When a beefy-looking cop with a receding hairline looked up, MacDonald said, “Go inside and ask the desk clerk if there’s a woman, first name Sophie, staying in room three-twenty-one.”
    The cop nodded and hustled away. We waited in a tension-filled silence as the scene continued to buzz with people and energy. From inside I could hear the sound of jackhammers and construction, and for the first time I noticed a small poster on the outside of the hotel that begged patrons to excuse the noise and the dust.
    After just a few minutes Stanslowski came back out and hustled up to MacDonald. “Desk clerk confirms a Sophie Givens is staying in room three-twenty-one, Detective. Do you want me and Reynolds to track her down?”
    MacDonald glanced at the body on the pavement, then back to me. “Yeah,” he said, his eyes wide with surprise. “Have management take you up to her room and see if she’s there. If not, see if you can find some photo ID and bring it back to me.”
    “On it,” he said, and whistled to another uniformed policeman.
    “Mind if I ask you a few questions?” MacDonald asked me.
    “I figured you’d say that,” I said wearily. “And I’d love to answer them all, but I have a condition.”
    “A condition?” he repeated with an arched eyebrow that told me I didn’t fully comprehend the precariousness of my position.
    “Yes,” I said, undaunted. “If I answer all of your questions, and if you discover that my story checks out, I want to cross this tape before they take her body away.”
    “Nope,” said MacDonald, and his tone suggested there was no room for negotiation.
    I looked at him for a long moment, wanting to argue but struggling with that motivation. Finally I opened my purse and handed him my boarding pass. “My plane got in an hour and a half ago,” I said, digging around in my purse again. “From that point on we went on two errands, here and here.” And I handed over the receipts from the sporting goods store and the hardware store. Going back to my purse I scrounged around for my card and one of the e-mails from Gopher to Gilley that I thought was particularly interesting.
    “What’s this?” said MacDonald as he took the e-mail.
    “That’s some correspondence from my business partner to the television production team that has invited me here to San Francisco,” I said. “I’m the real deal, Detective, and the issue here isn’t proving that to you as much as it is needing to get Sophie to understand that her body has died and that it’s all right to move on, because right now her soul is suffering. It’s clear to me that she hasn’t made the connection that her body has stopped working and she can never come back to the land of the living. And the longer you and I stand here and trade credentials, the longer her suffering continues.”
    Just then the detective’s cell phone beeped. He answered it quickly, and the voice coming through the earpiece was loud enough for me to hear.
    “It’s Stanslowski,” said the voice. “I’m up here in room three-twenty-one, and we got ourselves a crime scene, Detective. There’s blood on the carpet, and the place has been ransacked. Also, we found the lady’s purse—her passport photo matches the woman on the pavement, sir.”
    MacDonald’s eyes bored into mine, and his lips became pencil thin. “Secure the scene, Art,” he said. “I’ll be up in a minute.”
    I smiled at him and motioned back to the area where Sophie’s body lay. “All I want is two minutes over there. I won’t touch the body; I can even stand on that patch of lawn next to the ambulance. I just need to get close enough to grab her attention and send her on her