When we arrived at Mort's, Nicholas unlocked the door and let us in. I guessed the locked door meant there wasn't a viewing scheduled. Good thing. I'd seen exactly one dead person (or, as it turned out, undead) and I wasn't looking forward to seeing another.
We checked in with Mr. Bone, who was sitting in his office. Not much wiped the smile from Mort's face, but the chaos in the mortuary had left him pale under his golfer's tan. He showed us where the trouble was and retreated quickly. The Tranquility Room was the nicest room at the funeral home, decorated in tasteful beiges. A large fire roared in the fireplace.
"Who lit that fire?" Rose asked.
Nicholas shrugged. "Nobody knows. That's the problem."
"What is that smell?" I asked. It sure wasn't funeral flowers.
"It's cologne," Poppy replied, sniffing the air. "Dreamer by Versace, to be specific."
Since when had she become a men's fragrance expert? Then I remembered the parade of one-time-onlys that had crossed our threshold in the past few months. Not one, single guy had been granted a repeat date.
"Which one of your guys used that?"
She stared at me for a minute. "None of them," she said. "Don't you remember? It's what Dad always smelled like."
I tried not to wince. I didn't remember. In fact, I didn't want to remember.
"I guess that means our ghost is most likely a male," Rose said.
"Do you think it's him?" Poppy said hopefully.
"No, Poppy, I don't think it's our dead father paying us a long-overdue visit," I snapped. "In the first place, he's probably living in Ohio with some woman, a pack of kids, and a minivan."
I could feel someone watching me. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. We weren't alone. A large vase on the mantel started to shake. The vase rocked faster and faster until it flew off the mantel and whizzed by my head. It crashed to the floor and shattered.
I turned to Poppy. "Did you do that?" I thought she might be playing tricks with her telekinesis again. But she wouldn't scare the heck out of me just for kicks. Humiliate me, yes. Like when I borrowed one of her sweaters without permission, and it floated off me during my first date, leaving me hanging in the breeze.
Poppy looked pale and frightened. "No way!"
"This sort of thing has been happening constantly," Nicholas said. "The room is unusable."
"Looks like a textbook haunting to me," Rose said.
The fire roared higher and higher until I thought it was going to jump out of the hearth. Despite the heat of the flames, the room was terribly cold.
Suddenly, the fire went out, leaving the room full of smoke. When it cleared, I saw Poppy picking up a small piece of paper off the floor.
"Look at this," she said to us. "It's a funeral card. For a guy named Gage Atwood. He died last year around this time."
Rose peered at the card. "Amazing," she murmured.
"Whoever he is, he seems pretty ticked off," I said, looking at the shards of broken glass littering the floor.
"Can we check your dad's records for Gage Atwood?" Rose asked Nicholas. "It might help us if we find out how he died."
They left the Tranquility Room, leaving me with a troubled-looking Poppy.
"I'm sorry what I said before—about Dad." I said quietly. The truth was, we didn't know whether he was living or dead. But either way, he was gone.
"It's okay," she said, grabbing a tissue from a box on a small side table. It was a funeral home, after all. The place was littered with them. "I just need to be alone for a few minutes."
"Here?" I looked around the room. I could still feel a presence. "I don't know if you're alone, exactly."
"I don't mind," Poppy said.
"Are you sure it's okay to leave you?"
"He threw a vase at you, not me." She waved me off. "Go ahead. I'll see you at Slim's."
I left her in the wrecked room but stood in the hallway out of sight for a few seconds before leaving. It sounded like Poppy was trying to talk to the ghost. I checked my watch and finally decided she'd be safe enough. Rose, Nicholas, and Mr. Bone were there if she got into any real trouble.
If I'd had any idea what was going to happen, I would never have left her alone with a ghost. Not for a second. So much for my psychic skills.