Haunting License

Book 3: Haunted Haven Mystery

by Carol J. Perry

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

The latest novel in this exciting supernatural cozy series from the author of the Witch City Mysteries features a New Englander transplanted to a Florida town along the scenic Gulf of Mexico when she inherits a charming, century-old—and very haunted—inn from a mysterious benefactor. Fans of Amanda Flower and Heather Blake will delight in murder, ghosts, and the heroine’s golden retriever, Finn.
 
It’s June in Haven, Florida, a “between seasons” time in the tourism business, and Maureen’s Haven House Inn is feeling the pinch. There are plenty of ghosts in residence, but Maureen needs living guests to pay the bills.
 
Inspired by an old brochure she finds in a trunk she inherited along with the inn from her mysterious benefactor Penelope Josephine Gray, she gets the brilliant idea to revive a June fishing tournament from twenty years ago, hoping to reel in anglers who’d love to catch the Gulf Coast’s popular kingfish and take home a trophy.
 
But one fisherman won’t make it to the tournament. While walking on the beach with her golden retriever Finn, Maureen discovers a body. When Officer Frank Hubbard arrives, he recognizes local charter boat fisherman Eddie Manuel.
 
Now it’s up to Maureen and her spirited sleuths to sort through the red herrings and bait a hook for a killer before someone else ends up sleeping with the fishes . . .
 
Praise for Be My Ghost

“Maureen is a breath of fresh air in the cozy world. . . . The ghosts, in a refreshing departure from most paranormal cozies, don’t take center stage, and entertaining subplots . . . keep the pages turning. Readers will look forward to Maureen’s further adventures.” —Publishers Weekly, STARRED review

Release date: June 25, 2024

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

Maureen Doherty suppressed a smile as George and Sam wrestled their awkward burden up the front stairs of the Haven House Inn, one man at each end of the vintage, round-topped steamer trunk. “What did the old woman have in this thing?” Sam grumbled as the trunk bump-bumped up the stairs.

“Feels like rocks,” George complained, pausing to wipe his brow.

The two men were part of the inn’s household staff and “the old woman” Sam had referred to was the late Penelope Josephine Gray, the mysterious benefactor who’d made Maureen sole heir to Haven’s century-old hotel. After leaving her job as a sportswear buyer for a now-closed Boston department store, Maureen had been in Florida for less than a year. It was early morning in the middle of June, and the twenty-seven-year-old Massachusetts native was about to experience her first summer in the Sunshine state.

“Do you guys think you can fit the trunk into my office?” Maureen asked. “It might be a little tight.”

“Sure, Ms. Doherty,” Sam promised. “We can jam her in there somehow.”

“Why does anyone want an old box that weighs a ton?” George muttered. “It’s just more of the stupid stuff the old woman hoarded.” Maureen had to admit that George’s assessment of the contents of the unwieldy piece of luggage was quite possibly correct. Penelope Josephine Gray had, without a doubt, been a serious hoarder. The contents of a king-sized storage locker had recently proven that. She also had to admit that amid the debris they’d unearthed in the locker, there’d been some treasures too. Penelope Josephine had planned to write a book, and Maureen had been told that the material the old woman had gathered for it was stored in a big steamer trunk.

“Feels like rocks,” George declared again.

But it might be treasure, Maureen thought.

Molly and Gert, two more members of the inn’s housekeeping staff, sat in rocking chairs on either side of the top step. “Come on, boys, you can move faster than that!” Molly teased.

“Yeah,” Gert agreed. “What’s a’matter? You two getting old?”

Maureen smiled. The four—Molly, Gert, Sam, and George—senior citizens all, had more or less come along with her inheritance of the inn. The previous management had exchanged room and board for their services, and Maureen hadn’t had the heart to change the arrangement. Besides, she’d come to love them all.

After some huffing and puffing and not a few minor cuss words, the trunk was situated in the first-floor office—wedged between a four-drawer metal file cabinet the previous office manager had spray-painted yellow and a white wicker table with a copier on top of it. This was one of the areas awaiting a serious redo. In Maureen’s top desk drawer was a professional portfolio of drawings of what the Haven House Inn could look like—if the place could ever bring in enough money to pay for it.

Maureen had already managed to make over the inn’s dining room and had begun construction of a gift shop on a corner of the broad porch. She looked forward to the upcoming return visit of interior decorators, Trent and Pierre, the designers of the portfolio, anticipating how pleased they’d be with her progress so far. Plans had been in place for several months for the two to return to Haven to celebrate Trent’s June birthday.

She was tempted to dive into the trunk immediately, but she’d learned in the short time she’d been an innkeeper that the needs of the inn had to come first. She checked her watch. There were already good smells of breakfast wafting from the dining room. Coffee? Bacon? Cinnamon rolls? There’d eventually be time to see what Penelope Josephine’s most recently discovered hoard might yield, but for now she needed to finalize the next week’s lunch menus with executive chef Ted Carr, contact an electrician about repairing the aging neon VACANCY/NO VACANCY sign that had lately taken to randomly blinking on and off, and perhaps most urgently, taking her golden retriever, Finn, for a walk. Breakfast could wait.

She thanked the men for their efforts, tipped them each generously, and headed for the elevator. The Haven House elevator was quite a piece of work. Shiny brass accordion-style doors opened into a polished wood and scrolled metal interior. She got in and pressed the UP button, watching through etched glass windows as the cage ascended two stories within its brick-walled enclosure. As soon as she stepped out onto the soft, rose-colored carpeted third floor, she heard Finn’s welcoming “woof” from behind a white paneled door. “I’m coming, Finn,” she said, inserting the key.

Finn greeted her with happy kisses and tail wagging. “Did I keep you waiting, poor baby?” Maureen knelt on the floor beside the golden, scratching behind his ears.

“It’s about time you showed up.” A familiar, feminine voice came from the direction of the long blue couch. Not too long ago Maureen would have been quite startled by the voice and the shimmering form beginning to take shape before her, but she’d reluctantly accepted the fact that she shared her apartment with the ghost of a long-dead movie starlet.

Maureen stood. “Oh, hi, Lorna,” she said, facing the beautiful, fair-haired apparition who always appeared in black and white—just as she had in the many 1930s movies she’d made as Lorna DuBois. “Busy morning. I’ll take him for a nice run on the beach to make up for being late.”

“That’s good,” Lorna said. “I was beginning to think I’d have to take him myself, and I’m not dressed for dog walking.” She performed a model-like turn, displaying the satiny, strapless, form-fitting, slit-to-the-thigh gown. “Like it? Edith Head designed it for Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face.”

“It’s lovely,” Maureen agreed. “and dog walking isn’t a good idea for you anyway. You’re kind of transparent, you know? People would notice.”

“I know,” she agreed. “Haven doesn’t like us ghosts running around in public.”

Lorna was right about that—and she was surely not the only ghost in town. It hadn’t taken Maureen long to learn that the city of Haven was very haunted indeed! She’d also learned that the citizens of Haven vehemently denied that fact to anyone who asked. There was no desire to have “ghost hunters”—and the attendant TV mobile units, cemetery vigils, audio equipment, night-vision cameras, and the swarms of people who followed that sort of thing—disturbing the pleasant pace of their off-the-beaten-path hometown.

Maureen took Finn’s leash from a hook behind the kitchen door and attached it to his collar. “I’ll see you later, Lorna,” she said, heading for the door. Taking the stairs instead of the elevator because Finn was more comfortable that way, they made their way to the ground floor.

Once on the sidewalk, the two picked up their pace, the woman in an easy jog, the dog fairly prancing toward the beach at the end of the boulevard. Most of the shops on Beach Boulevard hadn’t yet opened. It was a peaceful time of day that Maureen always enjoyed. They approached the Beach Bookshop and Maureen waved to shop owner Aster Patterson, who sat in a hot-pink Adirondack chair with bookshop cat Erle Stanley on her lap. A folding tray table held a chintz-patterned teapot, several teacups, and a matching platter full of round white cookies. Aster was an early riser. She got up before sunrise every morning to bake those cookies.

“Come join us, Maureen,” the woman called, gesturing to a striped folding beach chair. “I have a nice pot of Irish breakfast tea and a plateful of Peter’s favorite shortbread cookies all ready to enjoy.” The bookshop was one of the few un-haunted businesses on the boulevard, and Aster baked those cookies every day, hoping to entice the late Peter Patterson’s spirit to visit her.

Maureen had become accustomed to Aster’s unusual outfits—today the woman wore red-plaid Bermuda shorts and a black-and-white-striped hockey referee’s shirt. A very large pink eyelet sunbonnet covered white hair. Finn stopped mid-prance and tugged Maureen toward the woman. “Okay, Finn,” Maureen told the dog. “We’ll stop, but only for a minute. We have a busy day ahead of us.” She sat, facing Aster. Finn, with an agreeable “woof,” put his head on Aster’s knee and gave Erle Stanley a friendly lick on the nose.

Aster poured steaming tea into one cup. Using silver tongs, she added one lump of sugar. “There you are, darling. Now tell me, what’s in it?”

“What’s in what?” Maureen accepted a shortbread cookie.

“The big old trunk the boys delivered from the historical museum, of course. What’s in it?”

Word gets around fast in Haven.

“I don’t know. I haven’t opened it yet.”

“They say that’s Penelope Josephine’s trunk and that it’s locked.” Aster passed the cookie platter again. “Have another. These were Peter’s favorites, you know.”

“Who’s they?” Maureen wanted to know, accepting the delicate treat.

“Oh, you know. Folks. People. Everybody at the Quic Shop.” Aster referenced Haven’s only grocery store, “gossip central” for the town, another business that opened early every morning. “I heard it’s so heavy, it could be full of rocks.”

“So George says,” Maureen agreed. “But I don’t mind telling you, if the folks—people, and everybody at the Quic Shop want to know—I believe it’s only full of material Penelope Josephine collected because she’d planned to write a book someday. The Historical Society gave it to me because, after all, I’m her only heir.”

“Do you have the key?”

“Probably. She left a big ring full of keys. We haven’t figured out what half of them go to.” Finn gave a little whiney woof, tugging at the leash. Maureen stood. “Thanks for the tea, Aster. Finn’s anxious for his run on the beach.” The two resumed their jogging pace along the boulevard, slowing when they’d reached the shoreline. While Finn took care of business, Maureen looked left and right, smiling, realizing that they had the beach almost to themselves. A few waders were mere dots far down the beach, someone on a Jet Ski zoomed around in the distance. There was a sailboat on the far horizon. Finn would be able to run free. She bagged the doggy-doo and deposited it in the nearby receptacle, then, squinting in the sunshine, moved closer to the water’s edge, peering into the gently lapping waves.

The body was facedown, moving in a slow, rolling motion with the incoming tide.

Ever curious, Finn moved closer to the thing, nose twitching. Maureen yanked back on the leash and stood, once again looking left, then right, not smiling this time, wishing there was someone—anyone—nearby, some fellow human to validate the thing that was lolling among tiny white bubbles, mere inches away from the toes of her running shoes.

Call somebody, she told herself, taking a step back, reaching for the phone in her pocket and tapping the numerals 911. An operator answered immediately, asking the nature of her emergency. “A b-body on the beach,” she stammered.

“What is your location?” was the next calm, reasonable question. Maureen looked around for the closest landmark. “I’m right behind the Haven Casino,” she said, identifying the sprawling white building where Haven held weddings and dances and trade shows and baby showers.

“Is the person male or female?”

“I . . . I don’t know. It’s face down in the water. The tide’s coming in.”

“Is there anyone else with you?”

“No, I’m all alone. There’s no one nearby at all.”

“No swimmers? No one?”

“No one. There’s a sailboat in the distance, and I saw a Jet Ski out there, but it’s gone now.”

“I’m notifying your local police. Do you feel safe where you are now?” the calm, reasonable voice asked.

“I . . . I guess so,” Maureen said.

Local police. That means Frank Hubbard.

“Woof,” Finn offered. “Woof woof.”

“I hear a dog. Is the dog with you?” the voice wanted to know.

“Yes. My dog is with me.”

“I’ll stay on the line with you until help arrives.” The voice was steady, reassuring. “The police station isn’t far away.”

“I know. Thank you.” Maureen realized that her own voice was far from steady.

Come on, Frank. Hurry up! What if the tide starts to take this thing away? I’m not going to touch it.

There was a sound. A welcome one. “I hear sirens. The police must be on their way.”

“Yes. Will you be all right now?”

“I will,” Maureen said. “Thank you so much. Here they come.” Stuffing the phone into her pocket, Maureen tugged on the leash, moving herself and Finn toward the white building and away from that nameless, faceless body rocking ever so gently in shallow waves.

Maureen had been correct in assuming that the first responder on the sad scene would be Officer Frank Hubbard, Haven’s top cop. He drove a blue Ford, lights flashing, siren howling, up onto the sidewalk in front of the Casino, followed by an ambulance and the black van she recognized as the St. Petersburg medical examiner’s vehicle. Once the siren noise had faded away and the red, white, and blue light show had dimmed, Hubbard climbed out of his cruiser and approached Maureen. Wordlessly, she pointed to the spot she’d just left, and two EMTs, who’d already donned boots and gloves, a stretcher between them, hurried toward the shoreline she’d indicated.

“Well, Ms. Doherty,” Hubbard said. “What have you gotten yourself into now? Found a body, have you?”

Maureen knew she was being recorded on his bodycam. “Yes, sir,” she said.

“Come along, then. Follow me.” He followed the EMTs and she followed him. Finn lagged behind and she tugged the leash gently. “Is the deceased anyone you know?” Hubbard asked.

“I don’t know. He—it’s face down in the water.” She slowed her steps, watching as the men lifted the body, placed it on the waiting stretcher, and carried it onto dry sand.

“Let’s take a look then, shall we? He shrugged his shoulders. “Let’s hope he hasn’t been in the water too long—and that none of the sea critters have been chewing on his face. Know what I mean?”

She knew exactly what he meant and didn’t want to think about it. The man on the stretcher—and she could tell as they drew closer that the body was that of a man because of his gray beard—wore khaki shorts, the kind with many pockets, and a T-shirt adverting Fin-Nor fishing reels. “A fisherman,” she whispered as they drew closer.

“You know him?” Hubbard almost snarled the question.

“I’m not sure.” Standing beside the stretcher, she looked down at the man’s face, glad that it was unmarked by sea critters. The EMTs stood by, one of them holding a blanket, ready to cover the body. “Quite a few of the fishing charter boat crews eat at the inn,” she said, “and most of them dress that way.”

“I know him,” Hubbard spoke in a monotone. “His name is Eddie Manuel. He captains the Tightline. Six-pack charter boat out of the Haven Marina. Ring any bells?”

“I’ve heard his name before,” Maureen recalled. “Some of the guests at the inn have chartered that boat. Isn’t he . . . wasn’t he . . . sort of famous around here?”

“A highline fisherman. One of the best.” Hubbard signaled the EMTs to cover the man’s face, then dropped his voice. “He was an old friend of mine.”

“Oh, Frank, I’m so sorry.” Maureen gave Hubbard’s arm a sympathetic pat. “I had no idea.”

“When your call came in, I hoped it wasn’t him.” The EMTs carried the captain of the Tightline across the sand toward the black van. Maureen and Hubbard remained at the shoreline, still facing the blue-green gulf water, Finn sitting quietly between them. “Eddie’s wife called me this morning. The boat was all tied up at the dock, but he hadn’t come home last night.”

“You knew he was missing?”

“Not technically missing. Just a few hours late coming home from work, you know?” He shook his head. “Not like him. Not at all.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said again. “Frank, I have to get back to work. If you need me for anything, just call.”

“Sure. You run along, Doherty,” he said. “I’ll send an officer by to take your statement about seeing the . . . seeing him in the water like you did.”

“Okay. Come on, Finn.” They hurried across the sand toward the Casino. “You didn’t get much of a run, did you?” she asked the golden. “We’ll take a proper one later.” She watched as the black van moved slowly onto the boulevard, then glanced back at where Hubbard still stood alone. “Poor Frank. He’s very sad.” Finn gave a soft “woof,” and raced ahead, pulling her along.

When the two reached the inn, the four members of the housekeeping team—Gert and Molly, George and Sam—were seated in rocking chairs at their usual spots on the porch, two of them on each side of the staircase. Maureen dropped the leash so that Finn could run up the stairs, greet his friends, and receive the expected pats and scratches and “good boys.” Those formalities attended to, Finn lay down beside George, and four pair of eyes focused on Maureen.

“So you found old Eddie Manuel.” Gert followed the statement with a tsk-tsk sound.

“Drowned, was he?” Molly rocked her chair forward.

Maureen hadn’t thought about the cause of death, and the question caught her by surprise. “I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose so.” News via Quic Shop already?

Molly answered the unspoken question. “My cousin Bertha’s husband plays golf with the brother of one of the EMTs who picked up the body. She called me as soon as she heard.”

“You okay, Ms. Doherty?” Sam asked. “That’s no fun, finding a dead body.”

“Not her first time either,” George added. “Right, Ms. Doherty?”

George was right. Maureen had been in Haven for only a few hours when she’d discovered a dead man on this very porch. “I’m all right,” she fibbed. Finding another body didn’t make it any easier. “Did you all know him?” The four heads nodded in unison.

“Great fisherman,” Sam declared. “He used to have breakfast here sometimes when he had an early charter.”

“Ted knew him,” Molly offered. “Eddie was an old friend of Ted’s family.”

“I guess Eddie’s kid will take over the business—running the Tightline,” George said. “Though nobody’s going to be as good at it as Eddie.”

“Well, that’s not fair,” Gert said. “The kid’s barely twenty. It takes time to learn.”

“It’ll take a good long while for that one to learn half of what Eddie knew,” Sam scoffed.

“Yeah,” George agreed. “Like forever.”

“Huh, men!” Molly gave Sam a punch on the arm. “You just watch. Tommy will be fishing rings around old Eddie in no time. You guys are just narrow-minded.”

So Eddie Manuel has a son named Tommy who can take over the business. “Everybody has to start somewhere,” Maureen frowned, siding with Gert and Molly. “The boy may surprise you.”

“It’d surprise us if Tommy was a boy.” Sam laughed. “But she ain’t.”

Molly punched Sam’s arm again. “Tommy is Eddie’s daughter. Her real name is Thomasina after a grandfather named Thomas. But she likes to be called Tommy. And she’s a licensed captain, just like Eddie was.”

Sam rubbed his arm. “Hey, take it easy. I’m already lame from slinging an old trunkful of iron frying pans around.”

“Rocks,” George interrupted.

“It’s neither one,” Gert insisted. “What is in it, Ms. Doherty?”

In an amazing display of topic hopping, the conversation had moved from a dead fisherman to the qualifications of a girl boat skipper to Penelope Josephine’s locked trunk—all in the space of a few minutes. Maureen gave the same answer she’d given to the question of how Eddie Manuel had died. “I don’t know,” she said, and pushed the green door open. She grabbed a quick cup of coffee and a still-warm cinnamon bun from the buffet table, returned Finn to her apartment, and prepared to face the rest of this strangely begun June day.

With a stack of fresh-from-the-copier menus under her arm, Maureen once again opened the louvred door leading to the dining room. Admiring the way the new beach-inspired color scheme and the completely refurbished vintage bar blended with the inn’s original round tables and snowy white linen tablecloths, she was sure that Trent and Pierre would be delighted with the way she’d interpreted their design.

Moving through the room, she pushed open the door leading to the kitchen where, with all traces of breakfast cleared away, the usual before-lunch activity was happening. Confident that everything in the Haven House Inn’s kitchen would be moving along perfectly under the direction of her one-time bartender, now “executive chef,” Ted Carr, Maureen spoke a quick “good morning” to Ted’s assistant Shelly. The young woman paused in directing two new hires on the correct way to chop vegetables, and nodded toward the tiny space in the corner of the immaculate room, laughingly referred to as “Ted’s office.”

Ted stood, smiled, when she approached his desk. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey, yourself. How’re you doing?” Maureen asked, placing the menus on his desk. “Want to take a quick look at next week’s lunch menus before I send George and Sam out to distribute them?”

“Sure. Have a seat,” he said, sitting, and indicating the chair next to his. “I understand you’ve had an eventful morning. You okay?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” she said. “You knew the fisherman?”

“Since I was a kid.” He spoke softly. “I should have been with you instead of running earlier. Maybe we should start running together again.” The two had developed a habit of taking early morning runs on the beach together along with Finn, but had recently stopped, attempting to quell rumors that the inn’s owner and the bartender she’d promoted to executive chef were somehow romantically involved. Ted reached for the top menu on the stack. “I miss you.”

Maureen missed him too, more than she cared to admit even to herself. If they weren’t romantically involved, she knew that they were darned close to it. The long kiss they’d shared one morning on the beach had proven that. Determined to keep the relationship—or whatever it was—on the down-low, they’d stopped the morning runs, but not the knowing looks from the staff or the whispers from the grocery store. She wanted to say “I . . .