I walked back to my office to swap the camera battery out. I didn’t want it dying in the middle of photographing possibly bad people. When I got there, John was sitting on the sofa, not watching an infomercial for some kind of amazing stone-based cookware. He was normally entranced by the technological marvels of the home shopping network. As I watched, they threw plastic into a blazing hot frying pan and melted it down. A moment later they scraped it off with no problem. I swapped my camera battery and then looked at John. He was staring into nothing with a glazed look on his face.
“Hey, John, how are you?”
He looked at me as though he’d just woken up. “Good morning, Harlow. Why can’t I die?”
Oh boy.
“What happened?”
“I threw myself in the grinder at Mahalo Seeds. It didn’t do anything. So then I thought, why not get out of town? I hitched a ride in the back of some tourist’s car, and just when we went outside the city limits, I suddenly found myself on the ground. I can’t leave.”
I nodded, not quite sure what to say. Some ghosts are free-ranging and can go where they like, but most of them end up fixed in one spot. John was one of the lucky ones. He could go anywhere in Harlot Bay. Some ghosts end up trapped in a single room or tied to an object. If that object goes to the bottom of the ocean, so do they.
“We’ll figure out why you’re stuck here, I promise.”
John tried to smile at me, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it.
“Hey, I have an idea. Could you stand up so I can take a photo of you?”
“You can take photos of ghosts?”
“I can take photos of auras. Maybe I can see yours and it can give us some useful information.”
I didn’t know what useful information, really; I was just trying anything to get him to cheer up. It was bad enough being dead, bad enough being a ghost, bad enough being trapped in one town for endless years, and I was the only person he got to talk to? It was rough. I mean, I’m great company if I do so say myself, but people need people, even dead people.
John stood up and clasped his hands in front of himself.
I stepped back and knelt down so I could get his full body in the picture.
“Say cheese,” I said.
“Hippopotamus!” John said.
I hit the button, the flash burst out, and I took his photo.
John came over and stood beside me while I waited for the camera to process the image. As I’ve mentioned, it’s as slow as a wet week sometimes, and right then it was being particularly slow. John got as close as possible, but he was careful not to touch me. Unlike in the movies, ghosts don’t go through living things. All they do is bounce off like they’re tennis balls. You ever want to get rid of a ghost? Just swipe at it.
John’s photo finally appeared in the viewfinder. John wasn’t in it, but his aura was. It was bright blue, almost iridescent, like the wings of a butterfly. There were deep blue lines running through it like cracks. Up on his chest, near where his heart would be, there was a red mark like a wound. Running from it were strands of deep red. They crept up his neck and encircled his head like a crown. The entire top of his head was glowing in red, the blue completely pushed away.
“Does that mean I suffered a head injury?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. There’s something around your heart as well. That might give me a clue for where to start looking.”
John frowned and lifted his ghostly hands up to his head. He felt over his skull, checking for any wounds. Then he pulled his ghostly shirt aside and looked down at his chest. There was nothing there, no injury.
He sighed and slumped back down on the sofa, focusing his attention on the Flavorstone 3000 frying pan. The people on the screen were laying it on the train track, proving that it was the strongest frying pan in existence. The train hit it and the frying pan survived. Then they cooked an egg in it.
“That’s pretty amazing,” John said. He seemed to be feeling better, so I took that as my cue to get out of there.
I collected my gear, told John I would see him later, and then left. I got in the car and turned the air conditioning up to high. Because it was sitting on a flat surface, the air conditioning actually worked and kicked in. It was quite refreshing. I looked at myself in the rearview mirror for a pep talk.
“Okay, Harlow, you’re going to go back to the Butter Festival to take a photo of Fusion Swan and Preston Jacobs. Maybe Zero Bend, if he is there. And then hopefully, one of those photos will tell you something.”
My own dubious face in the mirror told me I didn’t believe myself. What else could I do, though? Someone had killed Holt Everand, and for all I knew they might kill again. They might have seen me at the warehouse, so I had a strong incentive to discover who it was before they decided to solve the problem of the snooping reporter.
I drove back to the Butter Festival, paid again—they didn’t believe that I had already been there that morning—and went in, only to find that Zero Bend was already gone. He had left an exquisite carving of an angry man holding up the head of a monster. I couldn’t help noticing that the monster looked a little like Fusion Swan. Coincidence? I looked around, but I couldn’t spot Preston Jacobs anywhere. Fusion Swan was also absent. The Butter Festival still had another half hour of carving left, and some of the other competitors were still working furiously. Glancing around, it was clear that Zero Bend was the best sculptor there.
I was in the midst of doing another lap when I looked out the door and saw Fusion Swan getting behind the wheel of an expensive car. I rushed out, but he was at the end of the street by the time I got there. I jumped into my car, prayed to the gods of mechanics, and started the engine before pulling out into the traffic and following Fusion Swan. Normally there is hardly any traffic in Harlot Bay, but perhaps because of the Butter Festival, there were tourists everywhere, and I managed to drive behind Fusion with two cars in between us. He was headed toward the rich end of town. Like most small towns, the rich had staked out their spot and then congregated there. All the houses over there were on a bit of a rise, fighting with each other for the ultimate sea view.
We only drove a few minutes before he suddenly turned onto a side street. No one was going that way, so if I followed him, the chance of him catching me was greatly increased. I decided it was worth the risk. If it got really bad, I could just take his photo and then drive away. I crept around the corner and saw that he had parked at the end of the street. I parked as well and got out of the car. I saw Fusion walk across the road and up to the front of a house that definitely didn’t suit this area. Most of the houses around it were fairly well maintained. This one was looking a little run-down. The grass was overgrown and the paint was flaking. It was very much the worst house on the best street. I moved closer, camera in hand, ducking behind trees. If Fusion turned around, I didn’t want him to catch me. He knocked on the door of the run-down house. A moment later, a weaselly red-haired man opened the door.
The possible drug dealer. It was definitely him. The man was so ugly he looked like a weasel’s face had literally been transplanted onto a human body. Standing there in full view of everyone, Fusion pulled out a roll of money from his pocket, passed it to the man, and received something in return.
Another blindingly obvious drug deal? Where were the cops when you needed them? I debated filming it, but the entire thing was over too quickly. Fusion said something to the man and then did an about-face, walking quickly back to his car. I saw him stuff a small package into his pocket.
I waited behind the tree until Fusion got to his car and drove away before running back to mine and following him. It was a short trip. We drove up the hill into the rich area of Harlot Bay. Here, the houses were more correctly called villas or mansions. Think white marble, lots of glass and a mixture of styles, some places Spanish, others Greek, and there was one that looked like a Turkish minaret.
Fusion pulled into the driveway of the luxurious three-story mansion. I parked and crept up the street, hiding behind another convenient tree just in time to see Zero Bend open the front door. Fusion greeted him. I hit the button on my camera and took the best photo I could. A moment later and they were inside.