TWENTY-ONE

It was only a minute or two before the inevitable happened. A longish snout poked into the open doorway, fangs bared and growling. The rest of the head and the shoulders appeared. It was a large German shepherd, dark and muscular, although it could have been part wolf, it was that menacing. It kept up the growl and we backed away slowly. Inky fell backward over one of the boxes and banged his head on the wall. He lay there, momentarily stunned as the dog prepared to pounce. I grabbed one of the boxes. It was heavy and I had no idea what was in it, but I heaved it at the dog and managed to hit the beast with one corner. A sharp pain raced through my side from the muscle I’d pulled, and I gasped. The box broke open and some plastic bags of dry brownish shreds fell out. The dog yelped and ran back out into the main room, passing his master who now appeared in the doorway.

Hank. Somehow I knew it would be Hank. Maybe because he was the only person I’d ever met here at Sunshine Acres. His red plaid flannel shirt was untucked over a white T-shirt, ratty at the neck where it could be seen under his ridiculously long beard. A packet of cigarettes bulged from the shirt pocket, a Native American logo showing through a hole in the threadbare fabric. Must be he bought his cigarettes at a discount from the Akwesasne Mohawk reservation to the northeast. A greasy John Deere ball cap, grubby faded blue jeans hanging loose in the butt, and scuffed work boots completed the ensemble.

“What the . . . ?” He didn’t complete the sentence. Inky got up, rubbing his head, then launched himself over the boxes at Hank, catching him square in the chest with his shoulder. Hank went down, cursing. The dog came running, but Inky had enough momentum going to propel him out the door and past the dog. I snapped out of my stupor and jumped over Hank. He was lying on the floor moaning, but as I flew over him he managed to reach up and grab my leg. I went sprawling on top of him and heard the breath go out of his bony chest in a whoosh. I recovered and sprang up, none too gracefully, and slammed the door. Inky flew over to me with a chair, jamming it under the doorknob. There was a lock on the door but we didn’t have a key. I felt a little twinge of guilt and hoped Hank hadn’t broken a hip or anything even though he was involved in criminal activity and was probably holding Spiro here somewhere. His breath came in ragged wheezes, muffled by the door. His footsteps approached and the knob rattled as he tried it. He pounded on the heavy old wood, and I hoped it would hold. The dog barked like crazy and scratched at the door.

Inky and I ran past the table. I grabbed the sheaf of papers. Too bad the computer wasn’t a laptop, or I would have taken that as well. We ran for the door. This one had a lock on the inside, which I set before we exited. Inside the store, I tested the lock; then Inky and I dragged over a crate full of maple syrup jugs and stuffed that under the doorknob for good measure.

I peeked out the exterior door. The coast seemed to be clear, so we ventured out into the cool night air. I took a moment to align the edges of the stack of papers I had lifted and stuffed them into the front of my fleece jacket. I tucked the bottom of the fleece into the front of my jeans and zipped it all the way up to secure the papers. Not too stylish, but it should keep this evidence contained until I could deliver it to the police.

We hightailed it back down the driveway, again keeping close to the trees. We jogged the quarter mile back to the side road where we’d left my car, then climbed in. My breath came hard and fast, and my side continued to ache. I vowed again to start exercising once my life returned to normal. Inky had not even broken a sweat. He was clearly in much better shape than I. He set something down with a dull thud between his feet.

“What the heck is that?”

“Pancakes for breakfast! Wanna come over in the morning?”

It was already morning. I looked down and could just make out the outline of a gallon jug of maple syrup.

“I couldn’t resist,” he said with a grin.

Whatever. I’d always hated it when Cal said that to me, and here I was thinking it. Whatever.

“We’d better get out of here.” I turned the key in the ignition and the engine started up. I did a U-turn and went as fast as I dared on the gravel road back out to the two-lane highway.

“Have you got any cigarette papers?”

“Huh?”

“Have you got any cigarette papers?” he repeated.

“Uh, no, Inky. Fresh out.”

“That’s a shame. ’Cause look what else I picked up while we were there!” He held up one of the plastic bags that had fallen out of the broken box. “This looks like some decent stuff.”

“Crap! Inky, is that drugs? In my car?”

“Well, yeah. I was going to test it out tonight, then offer you some with the pancakes tomorrow,” he said defensively.

Like I didn’t have enough trouble already. “Just keep the bag out of sight, okay?”

“Duh! I am aware that this stuff is illegal, you know.”

I was glad to hear that, at least. We had almost reached the village limits when a blue flashing light appeared in my rearview mirror. Damn! I was moving along, but I didn’t think I had been going more than a few miles an hour over the speed limit. I pulled over and took a deep breath to compose myself. “Inky, put that bag somewhere out of sight. Now.” He shoved it into the glove compartment. I was about to tell him to move it, but the cop was already striding toward the car. I certainly didn’t want the cop to see Inky fumbling around in there. “Let me do the talking,” I hissed.

“Chill out, babe. It’s just a cop.”

But it wasn’t just a cop. A face appeared in my window. A large, clean-shaven face under the brim of a big gray State Trooper’s hat. The same State Trooper who had visited me in my office not long ago. What were the odds?

I rolled down the window. “Well, hello! Detective . . . Hawthorne, isn’t it?” I tried to sound cheerful and innocent but probably failed miserably.

“Well, well, well. Mrs. Nik,” he said.

“Just Georgie, remember?” I put on what I hoped was a winning smile.

“Well, then, Georgie.” His voice was sonorous and sexy here in the night air and Inky leaned over to get a better look at him. “Do you know why I stopped you?”

I hated that question, especially when it was delivered in that cop tone of voice. It made me want to slap him but that didn’t seem wise. “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”

“You’ve got a taillight out.”

This was news to me. I’d have to send Russ out for a bulb tomorrow. “I didn’t realize it was out, but I’ll get that fixed right away.” I hoped that would be enough to satisfy him. It wasn’t.

“What are you doing out this time of night?”

Inky leaned over even farther, invading my personal space to a slightly annoying degree. “Hello, Officer,” he purred. “I’m Inky. From the tattoo shop in town?” I groaned inwardly. This was going to be a disaster. “My friend Georgie and I went to dinner at this fabulous Chinese restaurant up in Prescott.”

The Trooper shined his light into the car and square into Inky’s face. He didn’t even flinch. “Where did you cross the Canadian border?”

“The Burg, of course.”

“And this was at what time?”

My smile tightened.

“Oh, about, oh, what time was it, Georgie?”

I shrugged, unable to speak.

“Oh, right, it was about nine o’clock or so, wasn’t it? Just after I closed up the shop.”

I nodded stupidly, too dumbfounded to contribute any weft to the warp in the coverlet of lies being woven here.

“Let me get this straight. You drove all the way to Ogdensburg at nine o’clock at night, then went over the bridge, cleared Customs, and went to Prescott for some Chinese food?” His skepticism was frightening. Couldn’t two friends go get some Kung Pao chicken without being suspected of something? My nervousness was replaced by something approaching affront.

“You’ve obviously never had the food at Lucky Ling’s Buffet. When the craving for that General Tso’s chicken hits, you just gotta go!” Inky smiled broadly.

“You know, Georgie,” Trooper Hawthorne turned the light back onto me, but was kind enough to point it down at my boobs rather than into my eyes, a bit longer than necessary, “I’d still like to talk to you about that little matter we were discussing the other day.”

“She’s available! For anything,” Inky said, and I just knew he was winking. If there hadn’t been a State Trooper bulking up my driver’s side window, I would have elbowed him to shut up. Hard.

“Stay here. I’ll be right back.” I watched him in the side mirror without turning my head as he strode back to his unmarked cruiser.

Great, just great! “Couldn’t you have come up with a better story than that?” I asked. Actually, the story about going out to dinner wasn’t bad. We could have been at any restaurant and said we’d paid cash, and Detective Hawthorne might not have bothered to check it out. Crossing into Canada was another matter, though. One simple inquiry to the Border Patrol and that story was sunk.

“It was the best I could do on short notice,” he fired back at me. “And I could see you were starting to go catatonic. Somebody had to step in. And besides”—he poked at me with one of his long slender fingers—“I was hungry and thinking about Chinese food! I was at the shop all day and only had a protein bar for dinner in between tats. It’s been a stressful night, you know!”

That was an understatement. It had been a stressful several days, and the lack of sleep was starting to affect me. Come to think of it, I was ready to gnaw off my own arm if I thought it would taste good. I’d have to eat something when I got back to the restaurant. If I got back to the restaurant.

I glanced in the mirror again. The detective was out of his car and moving toward us. He was illuminated from behind by the flashing of his Kojak light, and his jaw had a set to it that did not seem, um, happy.

“Inky, hold on.” I’d made a sudden, stupid decision, but I was committed now. There was no way I could allow that Trooper to search this car and find that bag of dope. No. Way. In. Hell. I jammed the accelerator to the floor and peeled out. Inky flew to one side, then righted himself. In the rearview mirror I could see the Trooper pulling out his radio and running back to his cruiser. Good luck trying to call for backup, I thought. Detective Hawthorne was almost certainly the only Trooper around for miles. And the Bay’s police department would all be sleeping, whether an officer was on duty or not.

I hung a quick right under the arch emblazoned “Welcome to Bonaparte Bay, Gateway to the 1000 Islands” in glowing pink neon. Inky squealed with delight. The Trooper’s siren wailed in the distance, getting closer. I turned down a side street, then down another, and pulled over. “Get out, and put that bag inside your jacket,” I ordered.

“Get out?”

“Just do it!” The sheaf of papers from Sunshine Acres was still in the front of my fleece and I resecured the load. “Follow me, and move!” Like he couldn’t run circles around me.

We hightailed it through the night and didn’t stop until we arrived, panting, at the door to Keith’s boat shop. This would be the test of whether Keith was appropriate boyfriend material. I was going to have to trust him. And he was going to have to trust me.

“Keep an eye out for that cop,” I ordered again.

“You betcha!” How could he be so darn cheerful? I was now in as much trouble as I’d ever been in my life, and Inky sounded as though he’d just won a trip to Dollywood. My knuckles rapped softly on the door. I didn’t hold out much hope for Keith hearing me, since the door was at the bottom of a stairwell and it was three o’clock in the morning. He’d almost certainly be asleep. I tried the knob. The door was locked, as expected.

We circled around to the dock and went inside the open boathouse. A half dozen boats in various states of repair were tied up to the cleats on the dock. If worse came to worst, we could hide out belowdecks in one of these. There was an empty slip at one end of the dock. I walked to the interior door, which I knew also opened into Keith’s apartment. Locked. Damn! I knocked again, not wanting to make any superfluous noise in case the Trooper had tracked us down, but there was no answer. The intercom next to the door made a god-awful buzz as I pressed the button, reverberating around the building and no doubt out over the water. Inky was examining the racks of hand tools on the wall. He did not seem the type to enjoy woodworking, but I didn’t know anything about him.

“Inky, can I borrow your phone? I need to check my phone messages at the Bonaparte House.”

He handed me the device, an expensive iPhone that I was unfamiliar with. “Er, you’ll have to show me how to use it too,” I admitted.

“Here, the Bonaparte House is on speed dial.” He deftly pressed some buttons and I connected to the restaurant’s voice mail system. There was a call from Sophie, demanding to know why I hadn’t called her.

Beep. “Georgie, I’m sorry I was so nasty to you earlier tonight,” Keith’s voice said. “What you do is your business. When can I see you again? I’m willing to challenge whoever you were with to a duel if necessary. I’m off to Syracuse to pick up some specialty wood, but I’ll be back tomorrow. Call me, okay? I miss you.” My heart gave a little tug.

Beep. “Georgie!” It was Liza. “Would you like to explain, dearest friend, why you haven’t called me tonight to let me know you’re all right? Also why the Morristown Police Department, all one of them, called about a certain boat registered to me that was found drifting up the St. Lawrence? They have your purse and cell phone, by the way. I don’t care about the boat. I own a castle and have scads of money and I can buy a new boat if necessary. I cannot buy a new friend. Well, I suppose it would be easy to buy some new friends, but I cannot buy a new you. If you don’t call me by morning, I am going to have to have Chief Moriarty start dragging the river. Call me!”

Aw, that was so sweet. She was worried about me. I could not ask for a better bestie.

No message from the kidnapper, but I hadn’t expected one. Jack Conway was most likely still on the island, unless he had come to and called an accomplice to rescue him. Now, that was a scary thought, one that hadn’t occurred to me. If he had somebody working with him, I had absolutely no idea who that might be. Hank from Sunshine Acres seemed to be the most logical choice. We’d slowed Hank down, but he could certainly be out by now. He wouldn’t have had time to escape from his makeshift prison, put a boat in the water, and retrieve Jack. But he might be on his way.

And now I knew why Keith wasn’t answering our knocks. He wasn’t even here. So much for that idea. Still, this wasn’t a bad place to hide out if necessary.

“You can check your e-mail too, you know. I can’t go for more than a few hours without checking my e-mail.” Inky brought me out of my thoughts. “Here, let me connect to the Internet.”

Inky pulled up the touch screen and told me to punch in my username and password. This was so much nicer than my own cell phone. The little machine was not only adorable but useful too. Someday, when I was not so tangled up with kidnappers, extortionists, drug-dealing aged hippies, and men trying to steal my husband, I could shop for a new phone.

Okay, that last was a little excessive. There would be no stealing necessary. I was ready to set Spiro free, and myself in the process. What I would do with my newfound freedom remained to be seen.

I scrolled through the spam until I got to a message from Cal. “I’m fine, Aunt Athena is watching me like a hawk! Heading out to work now. Tell Daddy and Yiayia I love them (U2, of course!). Say hi to Russ and Dolly for me too. Bye bye! (Heart, xxxxxooooooxxxxx) Cal.” She used the Greek word for “grandmother” to refer to Sophie. Fluent in both her parents’ languages, Callista could also speak quite good French. I did a quick calculation of the time differential and figured that she had sent it just an hour or so ago. That was a relief.

I stared at the most recent e-mail, the one I had been avoiding by looking at the older stuff first. I took a deep breath. My apprehension must have showed on my face or else Inky was quite perceptive, because he took my arm and asked with concern, “What is it?”

“I don’t know yet.”

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU UP TO? YOU ARE NOT FOLLOWING INSTRUCTOINS. YOU WERE NOT SUPOSED TO BRING ME A TABLE. I’M FEELING GENERUS SO I’M GIVING YOU A REPREEVE. BUT HE IS GOING TO START LOSING BODY PARTS IF YOU DON’T DELIVER THE GOODS BY NOON TOMOROW.

Best not to tell Inky about the missing body parts. Panic welled up in me. If there’d been anything in my stomach, it would have come up too.

If this nebulous treasure was not a priceless antique table, what the hell was it? Even if I did manage to figure it out, the bonehead had not told me where to bring the thing. My panic was replaced with anger. I was done. Exhausted, hungry, and done. The e-mail had been sent more than an hour ago. Jack Conway wouldn’t have been able to send this message—unless he hadn’t been unconscious for long and had a smartphone like the one I was now using. He hadn’t said anything about having been clocked by Sophie. Maybe he had big clumsy fingers and wasn’t good with the little keyboard, so he had to keep his messages short.

I had to get back to the Bonaparte House and try to figure this out. Walking through the streets of the Bay to get there was out of the question. There were only about a dozen streets in the whole village and I couldn’t anticipate where Detective Hawthorne might be. Even worse, he might have been able to rouse another Trooper or one of the Bay’s tiny police force to come and join in the search. He would almost certainly have found my car by now. I’d purposely left it unlocked so that he could search the inside, thinking that would buy us some time to get to Keith’s. It was probably illegal for him to do so, but I was counting on the idea that he wouldn’t be able to resist. Not that he’d find anything other than an empty doughnut shop bag and some spare change in the center console.

Once I got inside the Bonaparte House, I should be okay. I just wouldn’t answer the door. Which I hoped he wouldn’t break down. Without getting a judge out of bed he probably couldn’t get a search warrant before morning, but it was possible. A lump that seemed to be the size of a small eggplant formed in my throat. I was piling one bad decision on top of another and it was only a matter of time before they all came crashing down around me.

“Inky, we have to get back to the restaurant. We can’t go on foot. Do you know how to drive a boat?”

He looked at me as though I had two heads. “Are you kidding? Of course I know how to drive a boat. I’ve lived my entire life on the river.”

I had lived my entire life on the river, and I had never driven a boat until a few hours ago. “I think we should take one of these boats, preferably one that isn’t broken, and go around to the docks by the boat tour office. But we won’t get out there. We’ll go a little bit farther up the shore and go ashore over by the Taj Mahal Motel. Then we can sneak through the back alley and go in the side door. If the cops are watching anywhere, they’ll be watching the front and back entrances.” I only hoped that was true.

“What about Spiro?” he demanded. “You said we were going to get him back tonight.”

“I’m working on it.” I had no idea what I would do once I got back to the restaurant, but I knew I couldn’t stay here.

Inky took the little flashlight I offered and examined the boats tied up at the docks. “This one looks like our best bet. It’s small and won’t make a lot of engine noise, and we won’t need the deep water at the docks to land it.”

“Is there a key?” I could not imagine that Keith would leave the keys in the ignition when the front of this boathouse was open to the water and anyone could walk in. Like me.

“Honey, I don’t need a key. I’m a Bassport boy, remember?” Oh right, his childhood training had apparently included petty crime, or at least he had learned the skills for it. “Let’s see here.” He opened the engine hatch and shined the flashlight inside. “Oh, this will be easy. A piece of baklava, as my Greek god would say.” I felt a little twinge of nostalgia. I’d called Spiro that a long, long time ago. I didn’t miss the man, but I missed the feeling.

“What are you doing? Don’t you have to crack open the steering column or something?” I’d seen that on TV and in movies.

“No! That’s why this is so easy. See, in a car, the key also unlocks the steering column. On a boat the key just activates an electrical switch. So all I have to do is disconnect these wires back here and splice into them. Any Bassport kid can do this by the time he’s ten.”

I was intrigued by this mechanical skill Inky possessed. He was going to be a valuable addition to the family. Now I wouldn’t have to rely on Russ all the time when stuff broke around the house. “See if you can find me a pair of wire strippers, will you?”

Wire strippers? I did not have the foggiest idea what wire strippers were. “Uh,” I faltered. “What do they look like?”

“They’re like a pair of flat pliers—oh, never mind,” he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a shiny red Swiss Army Knife and fiddled with something in the engine compartment. In less than a minute the engine turned over. “Okay, grab a couple of life jackets and let’s get this show on the road.”

We found vests and put them on. I climbed into the boat and took a seat. Inky sat in the captain’s chair and put the engine into reverse, backing us expertly out of the boathouse. He turned us around and we headed out to the main channel. Despite my newfound skill with watercraft, I was happy to leave this particular trip to someone with more experience. It was one thing for me to wreck Liza’s boat, but it would be quite another to damage one belonging to one of Keith’s clients. I felt incredibly guilty at having borrowed this one, but I saw no alternative.

We ran at a slow speed so as to keep the noise down, with just the smallest possible light illuminating the black water ahead of us. It was close to dawn.

We passed the docks, scaring a seagull from its roost atop the giant paddle wheel affixed to the back of the Lady Liberty II tour boat. Inky cut the engine. We drifted into the shore near the Taj Mahal Motel and Inky stepped out into the cold water, rope in hand. He found a small upright post to serve as a cleat and tied off the boat. Then he came back and offered me a hand. Mechanically inclined and a gentleman too. I moved to the front of the boat and stepped over, a bit awkwardly, onto dry land.

Seeing no observers, we made our way the short distance to the motel. We cut under the motel’s carport and past the pink-painted office, keeping close to the unlit back of the building. From the end unit it was only a few yards to the Bonaparte House. I glanced involuntarily up at the windows, looking for any signs of activity, human or supernatural, but everything looked normal. We arrived at the emergency exit, which fronted on a strip of lawn facing the adjacent ice cream shop. If we ever had an evacuation-worthy emergency, there would be quite a traffic jam in this narrow alley.

My hand reached for the window in an attempt to raise the sash from outside so we could crawl in. Inky waved his hand at me and pointed to a rock to the left of the flat, irregular-sided slab of reddish sandstone that served as a stoop. He bent down and turned over the rock, producing a key, with which he swiftly and silently opened the door. Once inside, he turned to me and whispered, “Spiro put this there for me.” Didn’t take a genius to realize he’d used it more than once.

I decided not to comment. “Come with me,” I said, my voice low.

“Can I get something to eat?” he whined. “I’m starving!”

I was hungry too. “Sorry, but that would mean turning on a light in the kitchen. If that cop is watching the parking lot waiting for us to try to come in that way, we’ll be seen through the door.”

I could feel his pout in the dark. “What are we going to do, then?”

“Come on.” I led him past the restrooms and through the front dining room. The sun had not yet breached the horizon, but the sky was lightening in preparation, and the room was dimly lit. Napoleon gazed down at us, incarcerated in his heavy gilt frame.

“That picture gives me the creeps,” Inky said.

Funny, it had never bothered me, but I took another look and could see the faint menace in the hard thin line of that mouth. A frisson went through me and I shuddered.

We passed my office and headed toward the kitchen. I felt bad to be leading Inky toward the makings of a nice sandwich and a cup of tea without delivering, but it couldn’t be helped. I opened a door and switched on the light.

“What are you doing?” he cried.

The sudden illumination after so long in the dark made me squint. “Don’t worry,” I said as we descended the unpainted wooden stairs down into the damp cool of the basement. “There are no outside windows or doors down here, so we’re safe to turn on the light. The walls are solid rock, eighteen inches thick, so sound is not going to carry outside. Remember, this house was built for Napoleon to hide out from the monarchists and the revolutionaries, and as far as I know it’s solid as a fortress.”

“Well, okay, then. Anything to eat down here?” He looked around at the boxes of canned goods and pasta and extra china and glassware we stored in a rough semicircle around the outer walls. His gaze landed on a door. “What’s in there?”

“Oh, that’s where we store the expensive wine.” He made a beeline for the door and flung it open.

“Ooh, I wondered where Spiro was coming up with this stuff. This is a good one!” He held up a bottle of expensive French champagne. “Let’s have a glass!”

The idea was tempting, even at five o’clock in the morning, but I needed to keep a clear head, and so did Inky. “Let’s wait until we find Spiro, okay?”

His face fell, but then brightened. “A welcome-home party! That is such a good idea! We can make some horse doovers to go with it.” I thought he was making a joke, but he did grow up in Bassport and I couldn’t be sure. “How are we going to find him?”

No clue. He handed me the bottle and I replaced it on the shelves in the large closet. I felt a little draft of air as I did so. Air? How could there be a draft of air when there were no openings to the outside? We’d never had problems with water seeping in. As far as I knew every stone in the rough-cut foundation was sealed with mortar. I had made sure the cellar door was closed behind Inky.

The air seemed to be moving inside the wine closet. “Inky, come here, will you?”

He had been foraging among the boxes looking for something edible, but returned to the closet. “Yikes, it’s cold. Do you have some kind of cooling system to maintain the temperature for the vino?”

Nope. Even on the hottest day of summer it was fifty-three degrees down here.

“Look around in here and see if you can find the source of that draft.”

There was a gap of about two feet between the freestanding shelving and the cold stone walls. I examined them without success. After a minute or two, Inky said from his side of the closet, “Well, here’s where it’s coming from. There’s a door back here behind these boxes of French wine.”

A door? I had lived in this house for twenty years and been down here countless times, and I had never known there was a door in the wine closet.

“Where does it go?” Inky asked.

“Beats me.”

“I’m going to open it. I can’t resist!”

I was curious myself. There wasn’t room for two of us to stand abreast behind the shelves, so I stood behind him on my tiptoes as he opened the door, which was built into an interior wall, not the stone foundation. A blast of air hit us, momentarily stopping my breath. “Check it out!” Inky exclaimed. “It’s a staircase.”

He turned ninety degrees so I could see around him and up the dark passage. I shook my head. Had I been plucked out of my life and set down in a Nancy Drew novel? I thought I knew everything about this house, and here was a secret staircase leading to . . . I had no damn clue.

“You don’t know where this goes, do you? We’re gonna see, right? I don’t think I could stand not knowing.”

Me either. “Do you see a light switch anywhere?”

He ran his hands up and down on both sides of the stairway walls, finding nothing. I pulled the LED flashlight out of my pocket and shined it on the walls. I moved the beam up and illuminated an old-fashioned beaded metal chain with a little bell-like cap affixed to the end. He pulled the chain and the passageway lit up with a click.

Cobwebs lined the juncture of the narrow walls and the low ceiling. The stairway itself was dusty in the corners of the risers, but the treads were bare. Somebody had been up here recently.

“Did you hear that?” Inky whispered.

“What?” I aligned my right ear with the stairwell and listened.

“There it is again!” This time there was no mistake. A muffled moan floated down from the top of the stairs.

“The ghost,” I whispered.

“Ghost? Are you telling me those ghost hunters found something? I was meaning to ask you about that.”

My flight of fancy crash-landed back on terra firma. “They found something, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a ghost. Come on.”

I pushed past him and led the way up the stairs, each tread sounding a distinctive creak. At the top of the stairs I took a deep breath and opened the door.

My little light preceded me as I entered a long, narrow, triangular room, facing a very acute angle where two walls met. I fumbled unsuccessfully on the wall for a light switch, then shined the beam up again to find another pull chain. I gave it a yank and a dim light filled the room.

Motionless, on the bare floor, was the prone form of a man.