The Ghost Shrink, the Accidental Gigolo & the Poltergeist Accountant Read Online Free PDF

in the morning, Lucy lay in her bed trying to think of the Buddha. Or other Zen thoughts that did not involve stripping out of her navy silk pajamas and running naked into the living room, where Jake had crashed out on her couch. Attacking the poor, unsuspecting PI in a lustful frenzy probably wouldn’t go over well. Even if it would be a great— sweaty, orgasmic —way to pass the time until he could interrogate her sex-crazed ghost.
    The Buddha was not helping.
    Lucy twisted around in her bed, silk rasping sensuously against her skin and definitely not helping with her persistent hormonal urges. She should have slept in jeans. Or cargo pants. Anything that was not slippery and oh-so-easy to slip out of.
    Lucy rolled over and punched her pillow, burrowing down under the covers and wondering exactly how long she was going to have to suffer before Eliot Mellman arrived to put her out of her misery.
    She didn’t have to wait long.
    A thump sounded in the darkness of her room. Lucy sat up and spun toward the sound, half expecting—hoping—to see Jake. Ghosts couldn’t thump. At least, most ghosts couldn’t. Moving physical objects was beyond most of them.
    Eliot Mellman, it turned out, could thump things.
    He hadn’t been very big in life; his image was rail thin and not quite five and a half feet tall. His posture was apologetic, as if he couldn’t be more aware of the unwelcome intrusion his presence would always be. In death, he still wore thick glasses and his hair was parted down the middle and flattened down with gel in what was possibly the least-flattering style ever invented.
    Eliot stood at the foot of her bed, looking sheepishly at the ottoman he had tripped over.
    And glowing.
    Lucy blinked in surprise.
    Only the strongest of ghosts gave off any sort of illumination. Eliot was better than a nightlight. He was glowing brightly enough to cast eerie greenish shadows on the wall.
    As a man, Eliot Mellman had been stepped on so many times Lucy was amazed she couldn’t see footprints. As a ghost, he was Godzilla.
    Lucy wondered idly if all murder victims had firefly tendencies, which reminded her of Jake Cox sleeping on her couch. Time to get to work.
    Lucy smiled soothingly at the newly dead man at her feet. “Eliot?”
    Even if Cox hadn’t told her in advance, she would have known Eliot’s name. The name and circumstances of death just sort of came with the ghost, like a tag on a Christmas gift. In Eliot’s case, the image she got of the death was a little off—like a photo of frantic movement that only showed blurry lines of activity, red-tinted and vague. Lucy usually got a nice crisp snapshot of those last moments, but for all she knew, all murders were red and unfocused.
    Eliot twitched and looked up at his name, clearly surprised to be noticed at all, let alone known. “Yes?”
    When he didn’t immediately segue into a pick-up line, Lucy realized there was something different about Eliot Mellman. For one thing, he wasn’t trying to mount her.
    “Do you know what has happened to you, Eliot?” she asked cautiously. Some ghosts knew they were dead. Some didn’t. She was betting Eliot was one of the latter, judging by his unchanged hangdog posture.
    “I died?”
    Okay, so he was in category number one. “You remember what happened to you?” Jake hadn’t told her what he needed to ask Eliot, but she figured that question had to be on the list and she wanted Eliot to be comfortable with his new phase of existence before Jake started interrogating him.
    “I was murdered.” Eliot slumped a little more, pathetic and dejected. “I knew something was up,” he mumbled. “She’d never been interested in me before, but I wanted to believe she was on the level. I just wanted to believe that someone could want me, you know?”
    Lucy suddenly realized why Eliot’s death had been a blur of frenzied activity. She felt her face heating in a blush, but managed to keep any trace of her shock and