In the Ghost Detective Universe

  Ghost Detective Novels

  (best read in order)

  Beyond the Grave

  Unveiling the Past

  Beneath the Surface

  Piercing the Veil

  Ghost Detective Shorts

  (all standalone)

  Just Desserts

  Lost Friends

  Family Bonds

  Common Ground

  Till Death

  Family History

  Heritage

  New Beginnings

  Far From Home

  Severed Ties

  Eternal Bond

  Harsh Expectations

  Dull Expectations

  Ghost Detective Collections

  Unfinished Business, Volume 1

  Unfinished Business, Volume 2

  Family Bonds

  A Ghost Detective Short Story

  R.W. Wallace

  Varden Publishing

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Also By R.W. Wallace

  About the Author

  Copyright

  One

  I’ve been feeling terribly lonely lately. Not surprising really, when you live in a cemetery.

  I’m usually not the only ghost to haunt this particular ground. Some people come and go as they rise from their urns or caskets, deal with their unfinished business, and leave for what I assume to be a better place.

  Two of us have become something of a fixture. Personally, I’ve been here for over thirty years, and have yet to obtain that elusive closure one needs to move on. Clothilde, my moody twenty-year-old companion, has haunted this spot since the mid-eighties. She was here before me.

  We usually attend funerals together, greet the new arrivals together. It’s good to be part of a team, to have someone complementary to do the jobs I can’t do. She might behave like a moody teenager, but she’s a good person.

  She’s been AWOL for three days.

  I don’t think she’s moved on—I honestly think I’d have known about it, both the process of finding the closure, and the fading into nothing part.

  No, she’s hiding—and I’m bored.

  I think we have a new arrival. An old lady was buried on Thursday, and I’ve been hearing sounds.

  Usually, the old ones don’t linger for long. When you see the end coming, you get your stuff in order, line up the ducks for your heirs, say your goodbyes. Not much unfinished business, except with the really boneheaded ones.

  The normal thing to do when you discover you’re stuck in a casket six feet below the ground is to scream. Pound. Call for help.

  This lady—Bernadette Humbert according to the name penciled in on the temporary wooden cross on her grave—isn’t screaming.

  But she’s there.

  I can hear her scratching at the casket, talking to herself, even singing.

  If she’s not let out of the casket, it means she has not yet accepted that she’s become a ghost. She’s awfully cozy for someone who thinks she’s buried alive.

  A hand bursts through the dirt, quickly followed by a head. Old lady, indeed. She has one of those hairdos that seem molded in place no matter what you do to it. Slight curl, lots of volume, ideal lodging place for a beehive. Lots of wrinkles and excess skin, but if I heard correctly during the funeral, she was ninety-two, so it’s all par for the course. I’d say she has more worry lines than laugh lines, though.

  “Oh!” she says as she bursts free. “There we are. Hello, young man. How do you do?”

  “Hello, ma’am,” I reply, and tip an imaginary hat. “Robert Villemur, at your service.”

  She nods regally and pulls herself up far enough to free her torso. She looks around, taking in the cemetery, currently bathed in brilliant winter sunshine. “I assume you are also a ghost, Robert. Are there others like us here?”

  She’s not even out of the grave yet, and she’s already assessing her environment, looking for potential dangers. I think I like her.

  “Only two resident ghosts at the moment,” I say. “Three, now, including you. But my friend has apparently decided to take some alone time.” I shrug. “She’ll be back eventually.”

  Bernadette nods in satisfaction and crawls the rest of the way out of the grave. She seems to have already grasped the concept of being a ghost, where your mind decides what’s physical and what isn’t. To get out of the grave, you need to imagine footholds to step out, but the dirt you’re moving through can’t hold you back.

  Even crawling, there’s a certain dignity to the way this woman holds herself up. I’m guessing she’s one of those people for whom appearances are everything.

  She stands up, flicking non-existing dirt from her green-and-white checked pantsuit. “I must admit, I’d expect more than two ghosts in such a large cemetery. Are there not regular new arrivals?”

  I keep my eyes on her, hands in my pockets, to gauge her reaction. “Oh, there are funerals aplenty. But only the people with unfinished business linger.”

  One eyebrow arches up, but I also catch the twitch below her right eye. “You insinuate I have unfinished business?”

  I give a nonchalant shrug. “If you don’t figure out what it is, I’m afraid you’ll be here for a really long time, ma’am. The only situation in which I’ve seen anyone move on is when they wrapped up some loose end they’d left dangling before dying.”

  She draws herself up, gaining a good inch or two—nice, she already masters the standing-on-air thing—and looks down her nose at me. “Well, I never. You have some nerve making accusations of the kind. And we only just met!”

  “I’m not making accusations, Bernadette,” I tell her, and have to admit to a certain thrill on seeing the shock on her face when I use her first name. “I am stating fact. Now, I’ll just go hang out in my little corner of the cemetery.” I point to the cheapest section, where both mine and Clothilde’s graves lie. “If you want to talk, I’m here. It would be my pleasure to assist you in finding closure.”

  I turn and walk away while she’s still gathering steam, humming a toneless tune to myself as I go.

  Two

  It takes her two days to come around. I’m on the verge of going looking for her myself because I’m so bored. Clothilde hasn’t shown her face for five days, and I’m actually getting worried. Helping out Bernadette would at least keep my mind occupied.

  Bernadette takes almost an hour to amble across the cemetery grounds to reach me. She takes her sweet time, stopping to look at the different graves, tombstones, and mausoleums, attempting—but failing—to flick away dirt on the less maintained ones.

  Finally, she comes to a stop in front of me, where I’m leaning against Clothilde’s tombstone, as usual.

  “I can’t leave the cemetery,” she states. She stands with her hands folded in front of her, an old lady’s purse swinging from one arm. Nice touch.

  “No,” I say. “We can’t leave the cemetery. Nobody has ever managed that. Believe me, we’ve all tried.”

  “There aren’t any other ghosts.”

  “I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, ma’am.”

  “I don’t understand why I’m still here.” Her stance stays the same, and there’s no hint of emotion in her eyes. “I do not have any unfinished business.”

  I consider the possibility of just letting her believe that and send her on her way. So what if she’s too stubborn to admit she might have regrets? It shouldn’t be my problem.

  Except it kind of is.

  If she doesn’t address her issues, she’s going to stay here. And I might be bored right now, but I don’t think someone like Bernadette is going to make my life in the cemetery any better. Quite the contrary.

  Also, I have to help her. It’s my self-designated duty to help the other ghosts move on.

  It’s my only hope for redemption.

  “I’m not here to pry into your personal business, Bernadette,” I say, my voice soft. “But I’m willing to help if you want it.”

  She sniffs but doesn’t leave. After a pause: “What kind of unfinished business are we talking about? I simply do not see what it could be.”

  “The most common one is simply not having said goodbye to a loved one,” I tell her. “As long as the person comes to visit the grave at some point, the ghost usually moves on very quickly.”

  She shakes her head.

  “In second place, we have unsolved murders. Most people—naturally enough—can’t rest in peace”—pun totally intended—“until their murderer is caught and brought to justice. That one’s honestly tricky to manage when we’re stuck in the cemetery and can’t interact with people, but mostly, we manage. And quite often, the police actually do their jobs, and once the ghosts learn the murderer is caught, they move on.”

  Bernadette sniffs and lifts her nose a little higher. “I died of a heart attack in my bed, young man.”

  “Right.” I smile as if her attitude doesn’t bother me—and it doesn’t. People like Bernadette didn’t bother or intimidate me when I was alive; they certainly won’t when we’re both ghosts. “You asked me about unfinished business. I’m simply giving you our most common cases, to see if we find a match.”

  I start to pace back and forth, mostly to force Bernadette to swing from side to side to follow me with her eyes. “I’d say children come in third. It can be leaving them a mess of an inheritance, not leaving them anything and regretting it, not telling them they were good enough. The list goes on. Did you have children, Bernadette?”

  “I have a son. Guillaume. But there are no regrets.”

  I stop pacing and stand right in front of Bernadette. It’s difficult to look down your nose as someone towering a head above you.

  “You hesitated,” I say. “Before saying you have a son.”

  Bernadette says nothing. Pinches her lips together.

  “What?” I don’t let her break our eye contact. “Did something happen to your son? No? Was there just the one?”

  Her right eye twitches.

  “Come now, Bernadette. You can tell me. Who will I tell?” I indicate the empty cemetery around us. “Did you have a child you had to give away when you were young? A child who lived with his father and you never tried to get in touch?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she scolds me. “Do you realize what you are accusing me of? I will not stand for this type of treatment!”

  I’m tempted to ask her if she’s planning on going to the police but restrain myself. I keep my voice low. “Then why don’t you tell me what really happened. You had a second child?”

  She resists, but not for long. If I read her correctly, she’s realizing this might be the reason she’s still stuck here and getting out might be worth the bother of telling me her story.

  “I had a daughter,” she finally says. “She died a long time ago, leaving behind an unprecedented mess that I had to clean up.” There’s fire in her eyes now. “Her wanting to apologize to me for what she did I’d understand. But not the other way around.”

  I can’t help it, I’m hooked. “What did she do?”

  Bernadette’s voice has achieved that calm that means it’s best to get far, far away. “She took out two careers, one family, and an entire city council with one cut.”

  Okay. I need to hear this story. But first things first. “What was her name?”

  She spits the word out. “Clothilde.”

  Oh.

  Three

  I stand there, my mouth hanging open, as thoughts jumble around in my head.

  Clothilde.

  This is Clothilde’s mother. She has to be.

  This is why Clothilde hasn’t shown her face since the funeral. She knew it was her mother and doesn’t want to meet her.

  Now, the question is: Can we get two birds with one stone? Can they find closure together?

  My chest pinches at the thought of losing my friend of thirty years, but I can’t wish for her to stay here any longer than necessary. If her mother being here is what she needs to move on, I’ll make it happen.

  I’ll need a little more information, though.

  I paste on a polite smile. “Perhaps if you tell me exactly what happened, I can give an opinion? Sometimes, an external viewpoint can see what the involved parties cannot.”

  She doesn’t look thrilled at the idea, but in the end, decides keeping up appearances after death is less important than moving on to the afterlife.

  “Clothilde took her own life in the most spectacular way,” she says.

  She was found in a hotel room in the city center, not too far from City Hall. The room was poorly lit and moldy, the hotel so structurally unsound it’d been demolished a mere year later, and the staff particularly unhelpful—by talking too much in some cases, by not saying a word in others.

  Both her wrists had been slit, the razor blade she’d used on the floor next to the bed. She lay spread out on the bed like Jesus on the Cross, her feet at the headboard, her arms hanging out so the blood fell directly to the floor, and her head lolling over the foot of the bed so that the first thing people would see when they came through the door was her dead eyes.

  The man who’d rented the room hadn’t used his real name, of course, but it hadn’t taken much digging to discover it was one of the city’s most prominent lawyers. The desk clerk described him perfectly, telling the police he’d arrived with Clothilde just before lunch, then left alone about an hour later.

  Having a less-than-stellar desk clerk’s word against the lawyer’s wouldn’t be proof enough, of course. His card with a scribbled date and hour—the day of the death, eleven-thirty—on the back in the lawyer’s handwriting, stuffed into Clothilde’s back pocket, didn’t help.

  His hair and fingerprints all over the room, even less so.

  Clothilde didn’t have just the one card with her. She also had the number of the City Council’s vice president.

  This was where the desk clerk came off as a somewhat credible witness and denied ever seeing the vice president in his hotel. He had seen another man come and go, one who hadn’t checked into the hotel but claimed to be there just for a visit, but it was someone else.

  Someone they never identified.

  Needless to say, once the media got hold of the story, it all blew up.

  A link was found between the lawyer and the vice president—the lawyer had helped the other man buy the silence of two previous mistresses.

  One of the mistresses was the daughter of another City Council member, currently married to a prominent financial mogul.

  An internal war broke out within the City Council, some blaming their colleague for seducing a younger, married woman, some blaming the woman’s father for not bringing her up right. The fight brought to light a slew of wrongdoings for all parties, and the entire City Council ended up being forced to retire.

  The financial mogul divorced his wife, leaving her with nothing, not even their two children. He kept the parental rights, but completely neglected the poor kids, who went from nanny to nanny until he shipped them off to boarding school in England.

  Clothilde’s father, who had worked as an assistant for the mayor, lost his job once it became clear how large the political impact would become. On a fast track to higher responsibilities, his career had taken a nosedive. He’d never managed to get more than a position as a dentist’s secretary, and most of their friends had cut all contact.

  “What about Clothilde?” I ask once Bernadette finishes her story.

  “What about Clothilde? She was dead. Selfishly killed herself and did as much damage as possible on the way out.”

  “But…” I furrow my brow in confusion. “I agree it could have been suicide. But it could also have been murder.”

  Bernadette sniffs. “It wasn’t. A police officer was brought in to look into it, and concluded—quite quickly, I might add—that it was suicide.”

  Something scratches at a memory while Bernadette tells her story. Something about the hotel. “Do you remember the name of the establishment in which Clothilde was found?”

  “Of course I do,” Bernadette replies frostily. “It’s the one just across from the train station. Hôtel de la Gare.”

  Memories come swarming back. My superior officer telling me he needs me to go check out a suicide in a hotel. Everybody knows it was a suicide, but someone needs to make an official inquiry and conclusion. He feels confident I’m the man for the job.

  Happy with another easy case, I go to the hotel, make a quick check under the bed and in the bathroom, peek at the now-empty bed where the victim had lain spread out, make sure the lock wasn’t forced, and conclude it was a suicide.

  I never even bothered going to the morgue to see the body.

  “What importance is the name of the hotel?” Bernadette asks, bringing me back to the present.

  “It’s not,” I reply, my throat dry. “Just curious.”

  “As you can see,” she says, clearly not catching on to my internal struggle, “there is no reason for me to have unfinished business with my daughter. We gave her everything growing up—love, education, a roof over her head—and she repays us by taking her own life and ruining our lives and that of many others in the process.”

  I force my self-flagellating thoughts to the back of my mind to look at later, and concentrate on the woman before me and the reason she is still here.

  “Did you immediately believe your daughter took her own life?” I ask.

  Bernadette purses her lips. “What does it matter what I thought? She did it. Ruined everything.”

 

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