Inspector Specter Read Online Free PDF Page A

fumes.
    â€œProbably a good idea,” she agreed. Ah, so I was going to get the reasonable Maxie this afternoon. Reasonable Maxie was a rare sight, and disturbing in her own way.
    I put the lid back on the can of thinner, placed the morning’s front section of the
Asbury Park Press
on the lid and stood on it. That way you know the can is closed properly. But there’s not much to do when you’re standing on a paint can, so I looked at Maxie. “How’s your mom?” I asked.
    â€œFine! She’s fine! Can’t I do
anything
without being questioned like a criminal?” She flew up into the ceiling and kept going.
    I got down off the can of thinner. The reasonable Maxie had left the building.

Four

    With Paul downstairs, Melissa upstairs with Wendy and Maxie’s whereabouts anyone’s guess, I didn’t have much time to consider why a young female ghost would fly (literally) off the handle (figuratively) at the mention of her mother.
    What I
did
have to do was clean up the movie room, or more specifically, the construction area. I put the paint thinner, stepladder and other tools in a utility closet handily located in the room and did a little quick sweep-up, and the room was presentable again.
    I, however, was not, so I went upstairs to shower and change before any of my guests returned from the beach or the town.
    I’d barely gotten myself into a presentable pair of cargo shorts and a blue top before my cell phone rang. The Caller ID indicated the call was coming from Jeannie Rogers, my closest friend.
    â€œHey, Jeannie.”
    â€œHeeeeellllloooooo.” The mournful elongation of Jeannie’s greeting indicated either that the world had just come to an end and it was left to Jeannie to break the news to me, or that her one-year-old (pardon me,
eleven-month-old
) son, Oliver, was already tracking below the necessary requirements for a terrific preschool he wouldn’t be able to attend for at least two years. Equally unmitigated disasters in Jeannie’s world.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, Jean?”
    A sigh that could have driven a hyena to Xanax emanated from my phone, but I’ve known Jeannie for a while, so I was expecting it. “Nora broke her leg,” she moaned. “She fell down the basement stairs going for a suitcase.”
    Nora? Who was Nora? Oh, yeah: “Tony’s mother broke her leg? Oh, that’s too bad.” Tony Mandorisi, my friend and home improvement guru, is also Jeannie’s husband.
    â€œIt’s beyond bad,” she went on, intimating that I had clearly missed the tragic implications of her—Jeannie’s—misfortune. “She and Jimmy were due in tomorrow morning.”
    This rang a vaguely familiar bell, but I couldn’t quite remember what it was that bore significance here. “Well, I’m sure Tony’s parents can visit after her leg is better.”
    Now Jeannie’s voice took on a decided edge, since I had not picked up on her deep and lasting misery. “You don’t understand. Tony and I are leaving on the cruise tomorrow afternoon. Nora and Jimmy were going to watch Oliver for five days.”
    Oh, yeah. It had been surprising enough that Jeannie—who defines the term
helicopter mom
to the point that she should be decorated by the Air Force—would agree to leave her young son for five full days, but Tony had insisted that they celebrate their wedding anniversary with their first solo trip since Oliver’s birth. So Jeannie had reluctantly agreed to go on a romantic cruise to Bermuda with her husband.
    Now that idyll was being threatened by a freak accident suffered by a woman trying to accommodate them, which Jeannie, of course, saw as the queen mother of inconveniences. I probably would have seen it as a dark omen indicating I should stay off the cruise ship at all costs, and that is the difference in our personalities.
    Another is the fact that Jeannie absolutely