“Well, at least this time it wasn’t my laptop,” Maxie said.
We’d called for Maxie and Everett as soon as it was discovered my laptop—which might be old, but it’s the only one I have—had pulled the same vanishing act hers had not all that long ago. Maxie had responded by immediately looking for her own notebook computer and clutching it to her bosom tightly. That is Maxie.
“That’s a huge help, thanks,” I said. “You didn’t see anybody heading in this direction? And by the way, none of you geniuses thought maybe it would be better to choose a spot for the bait that wasn’t right near the kitchen door where anybody could have slipped in and taken it?”
“We were watching then,” Maxie said. “Location didn’t seem to be that big a deal.”
“So you saw no one,” Paul said in hopes of clarification.
“No, sir.” Everett was at full attention. “I had been pulled off guard duty before the incident.”
Everett is a lovely man and a dedicated soldier—of sorts—so it’s hard to get angry with him, and I didn’t. But the thought of having someone I didn’t know get access to everything that was on my laptop, complicated by the idea that I might have to lay out a good deal of money to buy a new one—money I was saving to repair my ceiling from a bullet’s damage—wasn’t making me good company just now. “Who pulled you, Everett?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, ghost lady?” he said.
“Who pulled you from guard duty? Who told you it was no longer necessary to watch the laptop in here?”
“Oh, that would be Maxie,” Everett said. I would have been shocked with any other response.
I looked at Maxie. For a while. And she had the perfect Maxie reaction. She said, “What?”
“Nobody was guarding the laptop,” I pointed out.
“You were right here in the room,” she countered, and dammit, she had a point.
It was a point that seemed to land right between Paul’s eyes. Melissa saw it first as his head twitched and his eyes grew wide. “What is it, Paul?” she asked.
“Maxie’s right,” he said.
“See?” Maxie said, pointing at me. Then she looked at Paul. “About what?”
“We were here the whole time. First Richard and I were here and the laptop was on that counter. Then you came home, Alison, and Melissa and Josh all came into the kitchen. There was no point at which that computer was left alone, and yet it is gone.”
“It won’t be for long,” I predicted. “There’s nothing on that laptop our thief is going to find interesting. I’ll bet it’s back before we finish dessert.” I looked at Melissa. “Do we have dessert?”
“You are losing the topic,” Richard said. “The laptop was here the whole time and still it has gone missing.” That only succeeded in reiterating Paul’s last statement, but I guess the idea was to bring us back to discussing the stuff Richard cared about and not ice cream, which I cared about.
I decided to throw the ball back to Paul. “So what are you getting at?”
“Alison, ask Josh if he noticed when the laptop went missing. He is facing in that direction.”
That seemed an odd request, but I’ve gotten pretty used to such things, and the word odd barely even registers in my house anymore. It’s odd if something isn’t odd. If you know what I mean. I looked over at Josh. “You didn’t happen to be looking over there when someone took the laptop, did you?” I asked.
Josh was putting his plate into the sink because we only use the dishwasher when we have guests for dinner or Melissa cooks. Well, let’s face it: we always have guests for dinner when Melissa cooks. My husband turned his head to look at me. “Yeah,” he said. “I saw it vanish like that.” He snapped his fingers.
Okay, I didn’t see that coming. “You did?” It’s not that I doubted Josh, you understand. It’s that I really hadn’t considered that he would see my laptop disappear and not even mention it. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Josh shrugged. “I’m sort of used to stuff like that,” he said.
“Exactly,” Paul added, nodding his head. “Josh is used to seeing strange occurrences in this house. He didn’t know it wasn’t one of us.”
I looked back and forth between my ghost friend, who obviously had some point he was trying to make, and my husband, who was clearing dishes and getting ready to wash them. Always marry a man who’s used to living by himself. He’s broken in on having to do things. What Paul was saying just slowly dawned on me, but as usual Melissa was a couple of blocks ahead looking behind to see if I was going to catch up.
“I get it,” she told Paul. “Nobody, none of the guests or anybody, could have come in here and taken the laptop. It was on a counter up against a wall, not near the door. They’d have been seen not just by Josh, but by anybody who was here, just like you guys planned.”
“Exactly,” Paul said. “And yet, even with both living people like you and people like Richard and me in the room, the computer managed to vanish right before our eyes.”
“Is it possible?” I was catching on at the remedial rate. “Wouldn’t Liss or I or any of you . . . let’s face it, anybody but Josh . . . have seen someone come in?”
“Thanks, honey,” my husband said, probably not even knowing why. He had his usual amused expression on.
“Melissa is right,” Paul said. “The laptop was on a counter next to a wall. It’s entirely possible someone could have reached through the wall, secreted it inside a coat or a sweat shirt, and gotten back out without being noticed.”
“A ghost stole my laptop,” I said.
Josh looked up from the sink. “Stole?” he said.