“Everything okay there, Harper?” called Constance, hanging up the phone.
“I think so. Did anyone come through here, into the research room?”
“Joel was here a few minutes ago. He was looking for inspiration for his tour, he said. But he rushed out, said he didn’t feel well.”
“Besides him?”
“Nobody but me and Mr. Jones,” Constance said, indicatingthe older man at the computer. She smiled. “Sounds like a song, ‘Me and Mr. Jones.’ ”
“I could have sworn someone was in there with me, just a moment ago.”
“Betcha it was Señor Sanchez,” Mr. Jones said, looking up from the monitor.
“Who’s Señor Sanchez?” asked Harper.
“Our resident ghost.”
Twelve
“You have a resident ghost?” Harper asked.
Constance smiled and clarified, “We blame him for all the mysterious creaks and groans in this old building. After all, what good’s an antiquarian society without a ghost or two?”
“They say it’s the residue of one of the original residents,” said Mr. Jones. “ ‘Stone tape,’ I think it’s called. These adobe bricks are as old as the earth, ’cause that’s where the adobe comes from. The mud soaks up the spirits, and Señor Sanchez can’t stand to leave his house.”
“Ghost or not, we’re happy to have him, aren’t we, Mr. Jones?” quipped Constance.
“No harm in him,” Mr. Jones replied with a nod. “Constance, I’m going to require some assistance over here. Can’t remember my own damned password.”
Harper thanked Constance and bid goodbye to Mr. Jones. As she walked to her car, she questioned herself: Had shereally heard something? Or was it simply her imagination, stoked by too little sleep and too much talk of death?
It made her wonder, though. She knew she had seen something in that window in the Perles Mansion that first night. It made no sense, she couldn’t explain it, but still.
Sheknewit.
Maybe Joel was right about something, after all. Maybe Monterey really was chock-full of spirits.
The following day dawned sunny and clear. Outside in Ellen’s garden, birds were splashing in the birdbath and chirping merrily, and the day was already warm. Harper again struggled to accept it was October.
She had no classes today, just late office hours in case some of her students finally realized the midterm was coming up and were starting to panic. Until then, she could return to the antiquarian society and read through more of Soren Perles’s account book. Or she could stay in and work on her book manuscript.
Or she could follow Ellen’s advice, take advantage of today’s glorious weather, and do a little sightseeing.
She checked her phone. The charming, upscale town of Carmel-by-the-Sea was only ten minutes south on highway 1. She called up directions to the art gallery that represented Delilah Mason, and the GPS guided her south on the highway before turning off onto what looked like a residential street. After several blocks of private homes, cute seaside cottages set in lush gardens, Ocean Avenue became a main street lined with expensive restaurants and boutiques, galleries and cafés and ice cream shops.
It was not yet ten in the morning, but the street was bustling with well-dressed tourists: women with spray tans and Botox and hair extensions, well-coiffed men in pastel golf clothes. Prosperous-looking people.
Harper found a parking spot on a side street and headed for the gallery, Bentley and Highbaugh’s Fine Art, just one block off the main drag.
Boutique windows and candy stores were filled with Halloween-themed displays, witches and zombies and black cats. One store’s front window had red-gel handprints marching up the otherwise pristine plate glass as if left by the bloody palms of an assailant, or a victim.
Harper shivered. As a folklorist, she loved Halloween stories, but not the ones that focused on blood and gore. Especially lately. As Harper rounded the corner, she spotted a cute wooden sign:The Village Coroner.She did a double take and read it again:corner, notcoroner.
Get it together, Harper.She had death on the brain.
Finally, she reached the glass door of Bentley and Highbaugh’s Fine Art.
It had been years since Harper had meandered through an upscale art gallery. She made a point of going to major museums whenever visiting a city, the MOMA and the de Young and the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, the Art Institute of Chicago, and of course the many museums in Washington, DC, and New York. But art galleries always seemed to her to be the purview of Ladies Who Lunch, though that was probably a wildly outdated stereotype. Today, she noted the other customers were all couples.
