This time, a man answered the phone, and Andie said, “Professor Ulrich?” and when he said, “Yes,” she said, “I’m Andie Miller, no,” looking around for Mrs. Crumb, “Andie Archer, I left you a message earlier. I have a ghost problem.” He didn’t laugh or hang up, so she said, “I see a dancing blue woman. I think I know who she is, and I need to know how to… send her on. Or whatever.”

“You say you’re at a house in southern Ohio,” he said.

“Yes. Archer House.”

“I see.”

“Is that significant?” Andie said, praying they weren’t on a list of the most haunted places in the Buckeye State.

“Someone else was asking about that house. It has quite a reputation, right?”

“Someone else? Is there something I should know?”

“Tell me what’s happening.”

“This woman talks to me at night,” Andie said, and then remembered the woman at the pond and the man on the tower. “And there may be… others. I don’t drink and I don’t take drugs but I see… ghosts. I need help.”

“Of course,” he said, and then talked on for a good half hour, mostly about his research and the success he’d had, without giving her anything of use at all, much like his book.

“Who was it that asked about the house?” Andie said, interrupting him when she couldn’t take it anymore.

“I can’t tell you that, of course. However, I could come to you the first of November,” he finished. “Only for the day. My fee is five thousand dollars-”

“I’ll get back to you on that,” Andie said, pretty sure that Boston Ulrich knew less about ghosts than she did. She hung up and tried the other expert, Professor Dennis Graff up in Cleveland, and still got no answer even though she let it ring for a long time.

That left her with only one expert to turn to.

“Flo, I need help,” she said when her mother answered the phone.

“Andie! What’s wrong?” Her voice dropped. “Is it North?”

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Andie said, realizing that she was crossing over into Flo territory with the conversation she was about to have.

“Of course not, dear. You have ghosts?”

“I could be losing my mind. Hallucinating. Brain tumor.”

“No, honey, lots of people see ghosts.”

“Yes, but they’re crazy.”

“Forty-eight percent of Americans believe in ghosts.”

Flo using statistics was almost as unsettling as the statistic itself. “Where do you get these numbers?” Andie said. “Who takes polls on this stuff?”

“CBS before Halloween. It was on the news. And really, Andie, if forty-eight percent believe, don’t you think that some of them must actually have seen one?”

“No.” Except I have. Maybe. “Let’s assume for the moment that there are ghosts. Tell me how to get one out of here.”

“Well, the surefire way is to dig up the body and burn it,” Flo said, as if she were saying, “Use soda water to get wine out of silk.”

“Okay,” Andie said, thinking, You had to call Flo, didn’t you? “And Plan B would be…”

“Well, there are all kinds of superstitions,” Flo said, dismissively. “You could hold a séance and ask them to leave, but I never think that works. Why would they go polite on you all of a sudden? But if you burn their bodies, there’s nothing holding them to this plane. Where is this ghost buried?”

“I don’t know,” Andie said. “Also, this is an insane plan. Plus, illegal. I’ll bet anything it’s illegal.”

“Andie, if you have ghosts, you’re going to have to think outside the box. Call North. He can get you anything.”

“Right.” Andie rubbed her forehead again at the thought of telling North to burn a body. Not that he couldn’t get it done, he could get anything done, it would just be explaining it to him that would be difficult. “Let me get back to you on this.”

“Do you want me to come down there?” Flo said. “I’m very sensitive. I might be able to help. For instance, water and fire bar ghosts, they can’t cross running water and they abhor fire.”

“Really,” Andie said, thinking, My mother is a nutjob. Except she was sitting in the only house in southern Ohio that had its own moat. And a fireplace in every room.

“I should come down there,” Flo said. “I can help.”

Andie thought of her mother, wandering through the house, trying to find ghosts so she could ask them where they were buried. And what their signs were. “Just wait. I’ll get back to you. I promise. Thank you.”

Then she hung up and called her very last resort.


Southie knocked and came into North’s office a little before seven that night. “Your secretary’s not out there,” he said, looking back into the empty anteroom. “You know, she’s a cute little thing.”

“You can’t have her,” North said automatically as he scanned down his neatly printed notes. “She’s intelligent and efficient and I don’t want her quitting because you seduced and abandoned her.”

“Not my type,” Southie said. “Which is what I came to talk to you about. Kelly wants to go down to that house. Somebody else is calling the experts and asking questions, and she’s afraid she’s going to get scooped. I don’t see why she shouldn’t go.”

“Because it’s private property and she’s not invited.”

“Yes, but she would like to be invited. She would like me to invite her. I would like me to invite her. There’s no reason for me not to invite her.”

Outside the office, a phone rang.

“Yes there is,” North said, ignoring the blinking light on his phone. “You’re not invited.”

“Shouldn’t I be able to go see my third cousins without your permission?”

“In a better world, possibly. In this one, no.”

Southie sat down. “Let’s discuss this rationally.”

“Let’s not,” North said, pointedly staring at the case notes he was working on.

The phone rang again.

“I have a parapsychologist, a pro at debunking fake ghosts. We could take him down there, he could find out how they’re faking the hauntings, clear everything up. That would be a big help to Andie.”

North looked up. “There are no ghosts.”

“I know that,” Southie said reasonably. “You know that. But a lot of people don’t know that. If Dennis can show how it’s being done-”

“Dennis.”

“Professor Graff. He’s the real deal, North. Teaches at the university.”

“Which one?” North said automatically.

“I don’t know, one of the ones in Cleveland. You should meet this guy.”

“No, thank you. I have work to do-”

The phone had not stopped ringing, Kristin had evidently forgot to send it to voice mail before she left, so when it rang again, he picked it up and said, “Yes?”

“I need help,” Andie said, and she sounded upset, which wasn’t like her.

“Go away, Southie,” North said to his brother, and then spoke into the phone. “What now? Bats in the belfry?”

Across the desk, Southie said, “Is that Andie? I should go down there. She might need help.”

North covered the receiver. “The help will not be you.” Then he went back to Andie. “What do you need?”

“Can you find out where the kids’ Aunt May is buried. And maybe who used to live in this house a long time ago? And where they’re buried? In England? And where the kids’ aunt is buried?”

“Where they’re buried?”

“Just for the hell of it,” Andie said, trying for breezy and missing. “Because we may have to dig up their bodies and burn them.”

Jesus, she’s lost it.

“Buried?” Southie said. “Does she need help with a body?”

“No,” North said to him.

“No on the finding the bodies or no on the burning them?” Andie asked.

“Not you,” North said. “The ‘no’ was for Southie. I’ll find out what you need. Why?”

“We may have a ghost,” Andie said. “Maybe more than one.”

Southie leaned toward the desk. “You know, North, I have all my research on the house. It probably has the information in it that she needs. Let me go down there and help.”

“Andie has enough on her hands.” North spoke into the phone. “That seems, uh, far-fetched.”

“I thought so, too, until I started seeing her. Is it illegal to burn a corpse? If it’s already been buried and everything?”

This is not good, North thought. “What’s going on?”

“Has she seen a ghost?” Southie said.

North glared at him. “Leave.”

“North, I can help,” Southie said.

“Leave.”

Southie sighed, clearly disappointed in his brother’s shortsightedness. “You let me know if she needs help. I’ll be right there. I’m staying in tonight, so if you want a nightcap, come on over.”

“She doesn’t need-” North began, but Southie was already heading for the door. “-your help,” he finished as the door closed behind his brother, and then he went back to the phone. “Yes, generally speaking, it’s illegal to burn a corpse. I’ll call a friend in England tomorrow, it’s after midnight there now.”

“He won’t think you’re crazy?” Andie said, and North thought, Well, at least she knows it’s crazy.

“Simon’s not a run-of-the-mill guy,” he told her. “He won’t bat an eye. I’ll put Kristin on finding May Younger’s grave tomorrow. Are you all right?”

“Yes, thank you. Sorry to sound hysterical.”

“You don’t sound hysterical. The corpse burning is over the top, but otherwise you’re pretty calm.”

“Ignore that part. Because mostly we’re normal.” Her voice brightened, and he thought, Somebody else came into the room. “And thank you again for the computers. The kids love them.”

“Was it too much for Alice?”

“No. Alice uses it to play Frogger. What? No, you can’t play Frogger now, it’s almost bedtime. Go brush your teeth and then I’ll come up and tell you the story. Yes, now. It’s Bad Uncle.”

Who? North thought.

“Alice wants to talk to you,” Andie said.

“Okay,” North said cautiously.