Fantastic Detectives Read online

  The other ghost, Maggie, who’d died when she was four and never spoke, huddled in an armless padded chair, gnawing worriedly on a cuticle. I felt bad for upsetting her.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Marilyn asked Asia, referring to me.

  “Her hotel burned down, her business crashed and, well, burned, Tabitha and Sam moved on, and she’s wallowing in self-pity,” Asia said, throwing her hands up in a curiously mature but insanely annoying gesture.

  She was right, but I didn’t want to admit it, any more than I wanted to admit the rest of it.

  In my former life (before the hotel and the ghost-tour business), I was Nikki Ashburne, socialite daughter of famed producer Edward Ashburne, well-known party girl, unfairly tagged as one half of the Slut Sisters (given my distinct lack of sex tape), failed actress, etc. Then my beloved grandmother died, and I accidentally overdosed (thanks to the fact that prior to that night, my drug use had been confined to drinking and smoking the occasional bowl) and died, and when they revived me I was shunned by my former friends and the elite celebrity society I knew.

  Also, now I could see ghosts.

  So I’d set up a business doing ghost tours around Hollywood, culminating at a 1923 Art Deco hotel I was renovating, where the resident ghosts—whom I called friends—helped with the tour haunting. That was going well until my best friend turned out to be pretending to be my best friend only to exorcise my ghost friends so she could gain enough energy to find out where her dead boyfriend had hidden his ill-gotten fortune.

  My ghost friends had…done something to her I don’t want to understand the details about, and in the process my hotel had burned down, so now I was homeless and living at the Roosevelt, watching my savings vanish, because I didn’t want to run home to Daddy, because, well, all sorts of issues.

  “Well,” Marilyn said, her sweet voice breathing disapproval, “I had three divorces and permanently died from an overdose, and don’t get me started about my early life…but you don’t see me lying around whining, do you?”

  I flopped over on my back, my head hanging off the bed and giving me a head rush. Whee. “Snap out of it,” I said in my best Cher impression (which wasn’t very good). “You’re not really Marilyn, remember?”

  Most of the time she was utterly lucid and knew she’d been an impersonator, and utterly delighted in her role as resident Marilyn ghost. When reality and fantasy blended in her mind, though, she was under stress.

  She froze for a moment, processing, and then humphed down on the edge of the bed, the skirt of her iconic white dress from The Seven Year Itch fluttering down over her shapely legs.

  I moved my head from side to side, playing with the streaks of light against my face, until she spoke again.

  “I need your help, Nikki.”

  I sighed. “I’m out of the ghost-helping business,” I said. “I suck at it, remember?”

  I know I couldn’t forget. Aaron, Janie, and Marla were all gone, unfairly exorcised against their will, and Tabitha and Sam had chosen to move on together. I suppose I had helped them rekindle their lost love, but still. They’d left me, too.

  Her voice was breathy like the real Marilyn’s, but carried a hint of steel when she said, “You owe me.”

  Crap. I kinda did. She’d delivered a crucial message to me, and before that I’d come to her for information on the enforced exorcisms, and this was the first time she’d ever asked anything of me.

  I sighed and pushed myself up into a sitting position, clutching one of the enormous bed’s gooshy down pillows over my crossed legs. “Okay, you’re right. What’s up?”

  She looked down at her hands. “It’s my granddaughter.”

  “You have a granddaughter?!” Asia said.

  “She only looks like she’s in her twenties,” I explained. “But she’s been…around a bit longer.”

  Marilyn, like many ghosts, didn’t like being reminded she was dead. Frankly, I didn’t blame her. (I’d also fudged when I said she looked like she was in her twenties, because I’m nice like that.)

  “Yes, I do,” Marilyn said. “And she’s just about to turn twenty-one, and I left a trust in her name. I want you to find her and give her the information about the trust, and tell her I love her.”

  “Okay,” I said. Easy enough. “Where is she?”

  She scrinched up her pretty face. “That’s the problem. I don’t know where Jessica is now. She was seven the last time I saw her.”

  Headdesk. So much for this being easy.

  I found a hotel notepad and pen. “Okay,” I said, “let’s start from the beginning.”

  ***

  The van I’d used to drive my ghost tours around had been totaled in the fire, and I was still waiting for the insurance money. Most of my savings had been dumped into that hotel. So I had caved and borrowed a car from my father, even though I’d been holed up in the hotel almost nonstop. Nothin’ says lovin’ like your daddy’s 7-Series BMW. (You know, the boring, throwaway car for when he doesn’t want to be recognized.)

  It was a pretty spring day in Southern California, which meant it was already too hot and the tourists were out in full force. Hollywood Boulevard between Highland and Vine took twenty minutes because it was stop-and-go, especially past Grauman’s Theatre where all the handprints and footprints are in the cement, and all the people dressed as Spiderman and Jack Sparrow and Chewbacca, trying to convince saps to pay to have their picture taken with them.

  Only in La-La Land.

  Maggie and Asia had come with me; Maggie because she generally stayed close by me, and Asia because I couldn’t shake her even if I tried, unless she was off mooning over Rudy, the ghost hunter who’d helped me figure out who was exorcising my friends. Poor Rudy couldn’t actually see or hear Asia—she just showed up as static on one of his machines. Talk about a relationship doomed from the start.

  Marilyn preferred to stay at the Roosevelt. Here’s what I’ve learned about ghosts: The vast majority of them don’t stick around because they have unfinished business or are feeling all revenge-y—they stay because they don’t have any good reason to move on, and something here makes them happy. Rudy’s grandfather Aaron, for example, had been a groundskeeper at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, and taken such pride in his work that he stayed and kept working.

  I’ve known ghosts who stayed at their favorite movie theatre, keeping up with the latest films, and one, Otter, who has a permanent seat on the roller coaster on the Santa Monica Pier. (Ever notice there’s one seat nobody ever sits in? Uh huh.)

  Generally they stay where they died, but sometimes they go to a place they love. Some, like Marilyn, seem kinda stuck there. Others, like Maggie and Asia…oh, crap, I guess that means they’re stuck with me.

  Anyway.

  I finally managed to get off Hollywood Boulevard, and wended my way through side streets to Silver Lake, to Jessica’s mother’s last known address.

  Because all the towns that make up the LA area run together with no break between them, Silver Lake looked a lot like the rest of the area: a mix of upscale homes and more moderate neighborhoods, strip malls, and occasional parks, with the shadow of downtown LA in the distance.

  To get to the house I needed, I had to circle around and park in the alley because street parking was, as expected, nonexistent. These types of neighborhoods all had alleys running behind the houses, and detached garages that faced the alleys.

  “Stay here,” I told Maggie and Asia. Asia started to protest, and I added, “To protect the car. I’m locking it, but if anyone tries to break in, scare the shit out of them.”

  It wasn’t a bad neighborhood, but it wasn’t a neighborhood for quite this level of car.

  The house was your basic, one-story, 1950s house with a vaguely Spanish-style feel to it thanks to an archway over the front steps, which had brightly patterned tiles of red, blue, and yellow on the risers. The lawn, bordered with a low wrought-iron fence, was nicely manicured, and there were low flowers planted along the curving s
idewalk, and the pinkish stucco was well maintained.

  I rang the doorbell and waited, reviewing what I knew.

  Marilyn, whose real name was Joanne Kearney, had given birth young to Deanna. Deanna’s dad had ditched Joanne/Marilyn before Deanna made it to the world, the rat-fink bastard (Marilyn’s words, but I agreed wholeheartedly). Marilyn had discovered her talent for impersonating Ms. Monroe and provided for herself and her daughter, with her own mother helping out with childcare.

  Deanna had been a young mother as well, but to Marilyn’s relief at least had been married when Jessica came along.

  The door opened. The screen door was a heavy security type, also black, that locked, so the woman who answered could open the inside door fully and be safe from any weirdos as long as they didn’t have guns.

  She was probably the right age to be Deanna, but she was Hispanic, so I was thinking not. Still, I told her who I was looking for, and she said there was nobody here by that name, and I said I’d been afraid of that, but this had been their last known address, and I was trying to deliver a message for them.

  The woman said, “Oh! Yes, I think we bought the house from her—but that was seven…no, eight years ago.” She turned away from the door. “Alvar!” she hollered. “Do we still have the paperwork from when we bought the house?” I didn’t hear the reply. “This house!” Another pause. She turned back to me. “Come on in.”

  I stepped into a small, white tiled foyer, grateful for the respite from the heat. The foyer opened directly into the living room—a wide room with a bank of windows and French doors looking out on the backyard—where two teenage boys playing Xbox didn’t give me a second glance and a man, whom the woman introduced as her husband, Alvar, nodded at me. The two of them conferred, surprisingly quietly, and Alvar’s eyes flicked at me and then he nodded and went off to look for the house paperwork.

  The woman, Beatrice, excused herself for a moment and went into the kitchen. The air smelled like garlic and onions, and I realized I was hungry, which was probably a good sign.

  I was pondering whether I should sit, or ask for a glass of water, or kick the boys’ butts at Grand Theft Auto, when I heard Beatrice’s voice. She couldn’t keep quiet for long, apparently. I guessed she was on the phone, and what I heard was “No, really, here in my house!” before she pitched low enough that I couldn’t make out words again.

  Crap. Seriously? I hadn’t even given her my name. Was I really still recognizable enough to be interesting? My last paparazzo, Donny, had even given up on me after the hotel burned.

  No matter how down I’d gotten, I’d still automatically pulled myself together before I’d gone out. Okay, the lavender sundress was from two years ago, but I wasn’t really worried about comparison photos. I had enough makeup on; my hair was decent, albeit entirely unfashionable—I’d stopped straightening it after my accident, and kept it in a cute but short style, and that drove my mother insane, which rather amused me.

  But, hell, I didn’t want to deal with photogs and shouting people and the inevitable snarky headline on TMZ in an hour.

  Was Alvar really finding the paperwork? Or was that just a stalling tactic? If he was, and I left before I got it, I’d’ve lost my only lead.

  I decided to wait for a little bit. The paps had to get through traffic, too. With any luck, there’d been a Kardashian sighting and they’d be delayed. Or maybe Beatrice had just been calling a friend to gloat that a D-list (if that) celebrity was in her house.

  Beatrice came back into the room, and I’m pretty sure her smile was a little nervous, and I smiled back and decided not to ask for water because she might, just might, be crazy enough to put something in it.

  Then Alvar came back in the room, and Beatrice made a little psshhht noise like you’d make at a cat who’d been bad. Clearly he’d been more efficient than he was supposed to have been. I got the paperwork out of his hand and scanned the previous owner’s forwarding address, committing it to memory like I had the lines of the horrible made-for-TV movies I did back when I thought I could be an actress.

  The doorbell chimed, and Beatrice’s and Alvar’s heads jerked up like they were startled horses. The boys never flinched.

  “Thank you so much!” I said, polite ’til the end, and yanked open their back door. I nearly fell into the world’s tiniest in-ground pool before dashing to a wooden gate in the adobe wall that enclosed their back yard. I was in luck: It was trash day, and they hadn’t locked the gate because the bins were still out.

  I threw myself into the front seat of my car, wishing Asia could operate a vehicle because I could’ve yelled “Gogogo!” and tore out of there.

  Whomever Beatrice had invited over hadn’t stationed anyone to watch the car, and a few moments later I was out of the neighborhood and one car in a crush of many.

  “So I was thinking,” Asia chirped, “can’t you just look Jessica up on Facebook?”

  It really pissed me off that you can’t do any damage to a ghost by pushing them out of a moving car.

  ***

  In the end, I found Jessica, and I didn’t even have to resort to calling in any favors to do it. (Someone in the legal department at my father’s production studio loved Jin Pâtisserie’s macaroons, but I’d save that for another time.)

  I called Jessica, and somehow managed to convince her I wasn’t a scam—at least, enough that she agreed to meet me at a Starbucks on Hollywood Boulevard about a block from the Roosevelt. That part was crucial, because Marilyn wanted to be there; she was willing to leave the hotel for this.

  I wish I’d brought a sweater, because they had the AC in this place cranked up to Arctic. And I’d made the mistake of getting a mocha Frappuccino, although maybe my shivering would burn off some of the calories.

  I recognized Jessica the moment she walked in. I don’t know what Deanna had looked like, but Jessica had her grandmother’s genes in spades. I heard Marilyn gasp, saw her put a hand over her mouth. Even in shorts and a retro Led Zeppelin T-shirt, Jessica had the curves of a Marilyn, and the silky blond hair to boot. (Whether Jessica’s or my Marilyn’s was naturally blond wasn’t my place to ponder.)

  She recognized me, too; I’d given her my full name on the phone. Nobody else noticed me, though—probably because they were all hunkered over their laptops writing their screenplays. Jessica approached me slowly, glancing around, like someone expecting to get Punk’d.

  In good faith, the first thing I did was slide the information about the trust across the table to her. I’d included a picture of her grandmother, and when she saw that, her face changed.

  Hoo boy, I knew that series of emotions. It was, honestly, hard to watch.

  The barista called her name and she retrieved her latte. She’d composed herself by the time she returned.

  Inside, I didn’t feel composed at all.

  “How did you know my grandmother?” she asked.

  Marilyn and I had thankfully come up with a plausible explanation. “She was friends with my grandmother,” I said. “I met her quite a few times.” I was older enough from Jessica that this was possible.

  She shook her head. Her hair was straight, blown out, held back with a headband, and she wore cute black-framed glasses that somehow enhanced her big blue eyes. “But why…why now? I know the trust goes active now, but…”

  “That’s my fault,” I said. “My grandmother had given me the information, but then she died, and…”

  And what? And then I accidentally overdosed and died briefly and now I see ghosts? This is why I can’t talk to therapists about my issues. It gets weird way too quickly.

  She put her hand on the manila envelope, pushed it an inch or two away from her. “I’m not sure I want this,” she said. “I try not to think about my grandmother, honestly. I was seven when she died. I was really close to her, and I didn’t understand. I was…I still am angry that she left me. I know it’s stupid, but…”

  Beside me, Marilyn looked grief-stricken.

  “It’s not
stupid,” I said. “Honest to shit, I felt the same way when my grandmother died.”

  Except, honest to shit, it was worse than that.

  Instead of being seven, I’d been twenty-three, and my grandmother had been my rock, my stability in a sea of Hollywood insanity. I’d been close to my father, too, but my mother, not so much. She’d been caught off-guard when people (the media, the public, whomever) stopped seeing her as a beautiful young thing after I’d been born—and especially after I’d gotten older. When my younger brother came along, she’d transferred her affections to him, because even as he aged, he was less of a reminder of her own mortality. A daughter is a threat.

  To make it worse, though, my grandmother hadn’t just abandoned me by dying, oh no. When I woke up in the hospital after my accidental overdose—after taking pills I’d never fathomed taking before, just to find oblivion from my grief over her death—she was there.

  Sitting on the end of my hospital bed.

  She’d slapped me across the cheek hard enough to leave a mark (and that’s saying something for a ghost) and told me how stupid I’d been (as if I hadn’t known), and then she’d disappeared.

  She’d abandoned me again.

  She didn’t care about me enough to stay. She moved on, left me a second time.

  “When did your grandmother die?” Jessica asked.

  “Two years ago,” I said.

  “Oh.” She rested the fingertips of her left hand on the envelope, her other hand curled around her cardboard coffee cup. “You’re lucky. You got a lot more time with her than I did with mine.”

  “You’re right,” I said, only just realizing it myself. “I did.” And I had to let go of that anger, just like Jessica had to let go of hers.