“Whoa,” said Gil. “A body snatcher!”
“Yeah,” I said to him. “I’ve heard of this phenomenon before, and it can only be done by one hell of a powerful spirit, usually someone incredibly dark, and even then they can’t sustain it for long.”
“I’m confused,” said Tony from behind us, and I realized that he was trying to follow our conversation, even though he looked about two sheets to the wind by now.
“Gopher’s body was taken over by a very negative entity.”
Tony blinked dumbly at me, and I heard Gopher say, “I was
possessed
?”
I turned back to face him. “In the strictest sense of the term, yes.”
Gopher’s face turned ashen. “Oh, my God,” he whispered. “Do you think it’s still
in me
?”
“No,” I said with conviction. “I think that the spirit that took you over is gone. But there’s another thing that I’m even more worried about.” The faces all around me looked like they couldn’t take much more, so I decided to get right to the point. “If I was clawed again,” I said, pulling up the pant leg of my jeans to reveal the cut there, “then the knife that killed Tracy was somewhere close by.”
“Shit,” said Gil. “Shit, shit,
shit
!”
“We’ve got to call the police!” Heath insisted.
“Great idea,” I agreed, then glanced at my watch. It was two a.m. “MacDonald sure isn’t going to like me waking him up at this hour.”
“He’ll like it even less if we wait till morning,” argued Gilley. “And one more thing, M.J.,” he said, looking toward the front desk.
“What’s that?”
“You should know that the night manager is missing.”
“Anton?” I said.
Gilley nodded. “I saw him right before we started, but I haven’t been able to find him since I went looking to turn the lights on.”
I felt a chill spread up my spine. Pulling out my cell phone from my back pocket, I hit 911.
Chapter 11
They found Anton in the men’s room. He’d been knocked unconscious, and there was a nice-size gash on the back of his head. MacDonald said the night manager had gone in there, heard the door open behind him, and was just turning his head to see who had entered when he got a good knock on the noggin.
EMS took him away by ambulance to the hospital, and Knollenberg was notified. He showed up not long afterward looking like hell.
“Hi, Murray,” I said, waving at him when he came running in the door just as the ambulance with Anton pulled away.
“What happened?” he asked me, pivoting his head around like one of those bobble toys you see on dashboards.
“Anton was konked on the head,” I told him. “We think by the same guy who’s been running around here letting demons out and causing general mischief.”
“Is he all right?”
“We think he’ll be fine,” I reassured him. “But . . . er . . . he wanted me to tell you that he’s quitting, effective immediately. He’ll be back later in the week to collect his things.”
Knollenberg sat down heavily on a bar stool. “Damn,” he said. “And he had such great credentials. I was really hoping he would work out.”
Tony, who was still standing behind the bar, got out a highball glass and shared some whiskey with him. “Here ya goes,” he slurred, pouring a generous portion. “To take the hedge hoff.”
Knollenberg looked at the amber liquid in the glass, and I knew he really wanted to down it, but instead he turned back to me and asked, “What else happened?”
I told him everything. How we’d managed to cross Duke over and were working on the other ghosts when Heath and Gopher were tackled by one powerful spook, and how, when I went to help, I got knocked around a little too.
“And you called the police when you discovered Anton?” said Knollenberg.
“No, we called the police when we realized that the only way I could have been slashed by that demon was because the knife that acts as the portal key was close by. The police are scouring the third floor, looking for it.”
“Are
they
safe up there?” asked Knollenberg, eyeing me critically.
“I hope so,” I said. “They wouldn’t let me tag along. MacDonald wants me to stay put.”
“We’ll know if things go bad,” Gilley said dryly. “The screaming, running, and general pandemonium should alert us.”
Knollenberg sank back wearily against the bar and eyed the stairs nervously.
“Gil,” I said in an even tone. “Lay off, okay?”
Gilley rolled his eyes and muttered, “I’m just saying we’ll know.”
Heath got up from the couch and walked over to the bar. “I take it we’re through with the ghost hunting for the evening?”
“Have a drink,” I urged. “And pass me one while you’re at it.”
“What’s your poison?” asked Tony, wobbling on his feet.
“I’ll take a beer. M.J.?”
“Ditto,” I said.
“Gimme a scotch,” said Gopher, getting up from the couch.
About the time that everyone had downed their drink, MacDonald and a few guys in uniform came down from the third floor. “Any luck?” I asked the detective.
“Nada,” he said. “We searched every single room and got squat.”
“I was afraid of that.” I was beginning to feel that familiar chill along my spine.
“So I guess you were wrong about the knife being nearby,” said MacDonald as he rubbed his face tiredly.
“No,” I said quickly. “That knife was there, Detective, I swear. It’s just that whoever has it was on the move and likely has it hidden somewhere else by now.”
MacDonald eyed me critically. “Someone besides you guys and the skeleton crew is here in the hotel?”
“I believe so,” I said. “Which means that someone else has access to the hotel and is able to get in through the locked doors.”
“Knollenberg,” MacDonald barked.
“Yes, Detective?”
“I’ll want a list of all your employees, current and recent past.”
“How far back would you like to pull from?”
“Two years should do it,” he said.
Knollenberg got up from his bar stool. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” And he hurried away in the direction of his office.
MacDonald eyed me after he’d gone. “Got a minute?”
“I’ve got all night,” I said, motioning for Tony, the drunken bartender, to round me up another beer.
“Cool,” said MacDonald. “Come over here and talk to me.”
I grabbed the fresh beer and walked with MacDonald over to the steps on the other side of the mezzanine. “I know that Beckworth is probably paying you a lot of money to get rid of these ghosts,” he began.
“He is,” I confirmed.
“And I know that you take your work seriously,” he added.
“I do.”
“But I want you to consider pulling out and going home.”
That surprised me. “Come again?”
MacDonald looked around warily. “I’ve never liked this old hotel,” he confessed. “I came here once for a wedding and ended up getting a room. I swear something or someone stared at me the entire night.”
“Do you know if you were on the fifth floor?” I asked.
MacDonald blinked. “You know,” he said, “I think I was!”
I shrugged my shoulders and took a pull from the beer. “Gus,” I said.
“Who?”
“Gus. He’s a ghostie in residence here. He was watching you.”
MacDonald shivered. “Anyway,” he said, squaring his shoulders, “when we were upstairs looking through all the rooms on the third floor, we all felt this really nasty vibe. I think this hotel is bad news, M.J. I think that you guys should forget about this place and go home.”
“Can’t,” I said with a sigh. “We made a deal with Beckworth, and it was for a
lot
of money, Detective. Besides, I’ve never walked away from a job where innocent people stood to get hurt if I didn’t do something. And I won’t let this hotel be my first.”
MacDonald pointed to my shin. “What if that keeps happening?”
“Well,” I said, also looking down, “there’s not much I can do about it until someone recovers that knife.”
“Yeah,” said MacDonald, “about that. I may know something that could give us some answers.”
“What?”
“Do you remember when you told me that you thought it was weird that there were two women with international connections that I was investigating?”
I scratched my forehead and said, “Vaguely.”
“Turns out there was more of a connection than we first thought. I’d read in Sophie’s profile that she worked for an insurance company in London. Do you want to know which one?”
“It’s going to mean something to me?”
“It might,” he replied. “She worked for Lloyd’s of London, and you’ll never guess what her title was.”
I stared at him blankly. “Adjuster?” I couldn’t figure out what he was getting at.
“Investigator,” he said, bouncing his eyebrows.
I swirled this information around in my head, but I wasn’t picking up what MacDonald was trying to lay down. “Huh?”
“Sophie was an investigator with Lloyd’s of London. She specialized in stolen art and artifacts, often posing as a fence to recover the fleeced property.”
My brain latched onto the meaning now. “Whoa,” I said. “That woman in Germany . . . what was her name?”
“Faline Schufthauser.”
“Yeah, her . . . she was an art thief, right?”
“Now you’re getting it.”
“So Sophie was . . . what? Here looking for Faline? Or something she’d stolen?”
MacDonald rubbed his face again. “Hopefully I’ll know that tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve requested from her boss a list of the items assigned to her. I’m just waiting on them to e-mail it to me.”
“So maybe this knife was stolen by Faline,” I said, continuing to follow the thought. “Maybe whoever used it found it lying around her place and used it to kill her!”
“It might have gone down that way,” he said.
“And maybe Sophie was trying to recover the knife for someone’s collection!”
“Could be.”
“Did Sophie know that Faline was dead?” I asked, finding the flaw in my argument.
“If that’s who she was investigating, she sure as hell should have. I mean, it made national headlines in Germany.”
“And what does all this have to do with Tracy?” I asked, failing to see how things linked back to her.
“That’s what I’d like to know,” said MacDonald, getting up to stretch his back.
I sighed. “Your work is a bitch,” I told him.
“And yours is a piece of cake, right?” he said with a smile as he held out his hand to give me a lift from the stair I was sitting on.
“Good point.”
“What do you guys plan to do now?” he asked.
I held the half-empty beer up in front of him. “We’re calling it a night for now, but we’ll go back at it tomorrow as soon as it’s dark.”
MacDonald eyed me the way your dad does when he really wants to forbid you to do something, but knows that he’ll lose that battle. “Be careful, okay?”
I saluted him. “Yes, sir.”
He rolled his eyes and left it at that.
The sun was just coming up when we finally wrapped up our drinking binge. I was feeling mighty good when Gil suggested we all go out for breakfast. We invited Knollenberg along—the poor guy had been holed up in his office since he’d arrived at three a.m.—but he declined.
We found a taxi and asked the driver to take us to the best greasy spoon around, and were dropped off at Curly’s Coffee House. We trooped in like drunken sailors and plopped down in a big booth.
After ordering a plate of corned-beef hash and eggs (which I crave only when I’m tipsy), I began a discussion with the rest of the group to see where their heads were as far as continuing the hunt.
“I’m in,” said Heath.
“You know I’m in, M.J.,” said Gil, and I knew that as long as he could wear his commando outfit with all its pockets full of magnets he’d be okay.
“I’m in,” said Gopher, which surprised the hell out of me, and I began to have a little more respect for our producer.
“I’m out,” said Tony.
No surprise there.
“Aw, come on, buddy,” pleaded Gopher. “Stay on with us.”
“No way, no how, Goph,” Tony said, holding up the backpack he’d brought with him, which held all his stuff, and I knew there was no changing his mind, especially now that he was beginning to sober up a bit. “I only stuck around until now because it was the middle of the night. But after breakfast I’m heading straight to the airport. I never want to set foot in that hotel again!”
Gopher opened his mouth to argue, but I cut him off. “Let it go,” I said softly. “This stuff isn’t for everybody, Gopher, and Tony came up against something really terrifying last night. I don’t blame him for wanting out.”
Gopher scowled but let it go.
When it looked like the argument had been dropped, I continued with, “We’ll need to talk strategy. Gil, we’re through with teams. From now on the three of us will stick together like glue. Gopher, you can continue to film, and I’m going to give you a crystal to carry in your pocket. It should help if anyone tries to take you over again.”
“Shouldn’t I just wear some magnets, like Gilley?” he said.
I shook my head. “That’s going to screw with our ability to talk to these ghosts,” I said. “The crystal will do the trick; don’t worry.”
“And how should we try to protect ourselves?” asked Heath. “Clearly what we’re doing isn’t working very well.”
“I think that one of us should be on point with the entity we’re trying to contact. And what I mean by that is that while you’re focused on talking to, say, Gus, I’m going to be feeling out the ether for any nasties so that we’ll have ample warning and can get to our grenades quickly.”
“That works,” Heath agreed. “As long as someone’s got my back, I’m all for continuing on.”
“I think we should also put some of the extra meters in those areas where you’ll be continuing the bust,” suggested Gilley. “That way I’ll be able to warn you ahead of time if you’re about to walk into a hot zone.”