Haunted Guest House Mystery 03-Old Haunts by E. J. Copperman Page B

the job as her bodyguard, something Maxie rarely let Paul forget. This raised the stakes on his pain a good deal, I thought.
    “Why didn’t you ever say anything before?” I asked. “I told you I’d get in touch with anyone you wanted, to let them know you were…the way you are. You didn’t even want me to contact your brother in Canada.”
    Paul’s gaze was so intense it was hard to look at him long. But going back to spreading joint compound seemed sort of rude now, like I’d be insinuating his problem was trivial. He closed his eyes a moment, which helped in an odd way.
    “At first, I thought it was best to try to forget her,” Paul said. He turned his face away from me. “I figured I was gone and she needed to move on with her life, and I should do my best to stay out of it. That seemed like the thing to do.”
    “So what changed your mind?”
    “It’s just short of two years since all this happened,” he answered. “And things have changed, surely. I’m accustomed to my current state of being; I’ve accepted that there is no returning. But there’s something that feels…unfinished about the way I left Julia. Like I hurt her unnecessarily.”
    I didn’t understand that. “It’s not your fault you died,” I told Paul.
    “I know.” There was something in his voice. It sounded like Maxie had before, when she’d found out that Big Bob had died.
    My ex-husband was downstairs. Maxie’s had been found buried under the sand in Seaside Heights. Paul wanted to locate his ex-girlfriend. It was “Revisit Your Failed Relationship Week” at 123 Seafront Avenue. No doubt Mrs. Fischer and Mrs. Spassky would soon be visited by boyfriends they’d dumped in 1956.
    “When you’re alive, the idea that you need closure in a relationship seems normal,” Paul went on. “People understand that they need to make peace with what has happened and continue their lives. But what happened to Maxie and me…It takes a while to absorb exactly how permanent it all is. And now, I just want to know that she’s all right. I want to see if she’s moved on.”
    “Will you be able to handle it if she has?” I asked.
    “I’d like to think so,” he said. “It might be harder on me if she hasn’t.”
    The seam between the two pieces of wallboard was going to be smooth. I might have to do a touch of sanding when everything was dry, but not much. And that was good, because I hate sanding.
    “Okay, I’ll try to find your…Julia for you,” I told Paul.
    He lowered his head. “Thank you.”
    “It’s what friends do for each other,” I said.
    Paul turned back to face me. His eyes didn’t look any different than they usually did, and his semitransparent appearance didn’t allow for tons of color to come through, so I didn’t know if they were red. But he looked like he’d been through an emotional ringer. He coughed theatrically, and looked me in the eye.
    “If you do it for me, you’re going to have to do it for Maxie, too,” he said.
    “I know.”

Six

     
    “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I work in Harbor Haven.” Detective Lieutenant Anita McElone (rhymes with macaroni ) sat behind her immaculate desk in the squad room of the Harbor Haven Police Department, which is to say the entire department minus the chief’s office. Even on a Sunday morning, she was all business. “This is a murder that took place in Seaside Heights. Why would I know anything about it?”
    “Because you’re a detective, and you have a natural curiosity about something that happened so close to home,” I told her. “You’d know about it because you get the dispatches from the county prosecutor’s major-crimes division, probably in an e-mail on your desktop right now. And I’m figuring you’d know about it because, well, you’re the only cop I know. How am I doing so far?”
    McElone and I have an unusual relationship. I respect her professionally, and she thinks I’m a lunatic. So far, it’s been a workable