Jim Baen's Universe

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Fantasy Stories

New Jersey's Top Ghost Tours Reviewed and Rated

Written by Sarah Avery

Illustrated by Lee Kuruganti

Any day, the guys from Bizarro Jersey magazine would send a critic to review the ghost tour, and Jim Griggs meant to be ready. He clambered down mossy stones into the empty bed of the Delaware and Raritan Canal to retrieve the last of his rat traps. Full. Good. Damp seeped through denim where he knelt to pull the trap from its crevice. September’s first fallen leaves formed a thin layer of crackle over slow muck. His footsteps broke and squelched, broke and squelched, in counterpoint to the rat’s squeaking.

“Nothing personal,” Jim told the rat. He set the trap above him on the ledge so he could climb up to where his truck waited. The moment he set his feet on the towpath, the dozen rats in the flatbed of the pickup who had been his morning’s work squeaked along with the new one he set there to join them. Jim paused to wipe his hands down with sanitizer before taking the wheel. The ghosts needed their payoffs and pep talks, if they were going to give their best performances for the critic.

Good thing he’d brought his cell phone on the day’s rounds. When the girl in Weehawken who channeled the spirit of Alexander Hamilton phoned him up, Jim let himself think everything might come together just right. One hand still on the wheel, he popped in his earpiece and answered. “Hey, Suzy.”

“Jim, we have two things to say.”

We. So she was calling him from the site of Hamilton’s duel. “Shoot, honey.”

“Very funny.”

“Showing me your hair-trigger temper?”

“Do you want to know what Mr. Hamilton says to tell you, or not?”

“All right, Suzy, all right. What is it?”

She cracked her chewing gum before answering. “Mr. Hamilton’s, like, sure he spotted the reviewer. It’s a short, balding guy, kind of pudgy, too old to have any subtlety about snapping pics with his cell phone. The guy’s not even from Jersey. Big thick Boston accent.”

“Boston? What happened to hometown pride?”

“Anonymity, impartiality, some shit like that,” she said. “Bizarro Jersey had that thing last year. It doesn’t bother me that some people like their local ghosts best, but when money changes hands, it’s just not right. And if you want to stay on Mr. Hamilton’s good side, you won’t try bribing the critic again.” Suzy popped another big bubble with that goddamn gum.

“How does anybody expect me to keep a business running?” Jim said. “People don’t drop money on ghost tours like they used to.”

No reply. He could hear Suzy mumbling in troubled tones with her hand over the mic, arguing with someone. She resumed as if she hadn’t even heard him. “And Mr. Hamilton says if you cheat on your taxes again this year, he washes his hands of you. He’s always liked you, but the father of the IRS has to draw the line somewhere.”

Damn. How did Hamilton get out of Weehawken? Every time Jim thought he knew the rules, the ghosts surprised him. “Suzy, what are you saying to me? He can leave?”

“We always know a tax cheat when we see one. Sweet Jesus, Jim, you might as well clean up your act. Your act kicks ass. What, are you disappointed at not being a charlatan?”

“Thanks for the tip, Suzy. And you thank Mr. Hamilton, too.”

“It wouldn’t kill you to . . .”

“Catch you later, Suzy.” Jim had to hang up.

It wasn’t just that she was pissing him off. He’d finally found a decent parking spot on Union Street that would let him unload the rats with a minimum of schlepping. All on its own, the Cruncher picked the town’s riverfront clean of rodents, and if more weren’t brought in from elsewhere, it would start in on the local house pets. Would white rats, ones like any mail order reptile supply house could ship to you, do the trick? Oh, no, the Cruncher had to have greasy black ones with some fight left in them.

Nobody, but nobody, appreciated how hard the current economy pinched the small businessman. Time was when the ghost tour’s weekly take would allow Jim to pay some high school kid to catch the rats and endure the dirty looks from the tourists. This year, Jim had to collect the full traps and carry them to the riverbank himself, and all the while he did the hauling, the new manager from Martine’s was on his ass about public health.

What with the Cruncher around, turnover at Martine’s was high, and Jim had to explain again every few months. Nobody from the kitchen staff had told the new manager jack about the Cruncher. He must be a real jerk, if he wasn’t worth warning. Jim considered letting the guy find out the hard way. Nah. “Let me tell you a thing or two about public health,” Jim said when the manager ran out of steam. “You have to put up with rats two days a week, and you get five clean days without. If I stop the rat deliveries, the Cruncher has to eat something else. And then you’ll really have a public health problem.”

But the jerk went to phone the owner anyway. Not Jim’s problem anymore, since Martine would say the same.

The Cruncher was best approached in daylight, preferably when well fed. Jim brought the last couple of rats all the way down the narrow strip of grass between Martine’s and the jewelry shop. Under his breath, he ran through his patter. “Careful now, ladies and gentlemen, as we approach the most dangerous ghost on our tour.”

At last he stood, ratless, at the edge of the retaining wall above the big concrete pipe that drained into the Delaware River, and he listened for the slurping. The Cruncher had caught the early rats, all right, so Jim spoke up. “Who’s the boss?”

A deep rumble some ways into the drainage pipe vibrated the whole retaining wall under Jim’s feet. “You are. Boss.” And a scattering of perfectly clean, cracked rat bones rattled down the pipe in the trickle of the buried creek.

Jim couldn’t stay for conversation. His work was never done.

Whatever Martine had told the new manager suited Jim fine. The jerk hurried after him back to the truck, offering lunch on the house for the ghost tour gentleman.

“I’ll take a rain check,” said Jim. He dumped the last empty rat trap into the flatbed, wiped his hands down with sanitizer again, and went to deliver the payoffs for his other stops on the main drag.

The drowned frat boy who haunted the attic over the craftwares gallery needed a Scooby Doo video to get him inspired for the weekend. Travis wasn’t especially imaginative, but he did get the job done.

The unlucky proprietor of the cigar boutique who’d been haunting his own storeroom since the late 90’s wanted a new bootlegged Springsteen show. Jim hadn’t much liked Bill MacIntyre in life, but ever since Bill’s bear hunting accident, the two of them got along great.

“Put him on for me, man.” Bill was still too ethereal to push the buttons for himself. Jim popped the disc into the storeroom’s stereo. Up with the volume, and for four minutes, Bill sang along about his hungry heart. “Now this,” he said during the bridge, “is the Boss.”

When the living, the dead, and the recorded were done with the last verse, Jim said, “One of his best.” He paused the disc. “You’re not gonna let me down, now?”

“I’ve been practicing all week. Not a lot else to do.”

Satisfied, Jim got back in the truck and headed up to the little Quaker Meeting House. The local Society of Friends had long since given the drafty old stone structure into the hands of the State Parks system to be preserved as an historic landmark. The doors were locked on Thursdays, but Tillie Burriss had been dead a long time, so turning the tumblers in the lock was no problem for her.

“Mr. Griggs,” said Tillie. “Do come in. It’s such a beautiful afternoon.”

Blinding sunlight filled the Meeting House, poured in through the tall windows, and Tillie’s pale form faded into all that brightness. Jim’s sunglasses were still in the truck. “No thanks, ma’am. I picked up all your subscriptions.” Bundled in a big rubber band, the newsletters from the Anti-Slavery Society, Amnesty International, and a dozen other lefty organizations weighed heavily. It was a surprise to Jim every time she simply lifted them from his hands.

“Splendid! I wonder, did you have a chance to write that letter to the editor on my behalf?”

“Still working on it.” He’d forgotten all about the letter. “Sorry.”

“Human trafficking,” she reminded him. “We’re against it.”

“Right. Against. I’m on it. Tillie, the reviewer will be coming soon. Maybe this weekend. By the end of next week, for sure. When he comes, could you . . . I know it’s not really part of our deal, but . . .”

“You would ask me to take one day off from preaching abolition?”

He nodded. “One day off, after a hundred and fifty years. It won’t kill you.”

“Mr. Griggs, if you promise the crowd a martyr of the Underground Railroad, and then said martyr forebears from preaching abolition, surely that will sow doubt about your entire entertainment.”

“But if we get another review that calls you ‘pedantic,’ that’ll mean a smaller audience, not as many people coming to hear you talk about, well, whatever’s bothering you this week.”

Tillie pulled the rubber band off her mail and considered the front page of the Anti-Slavery Society’s newsletter. “The dire predicament of Filipina household servants in Japan.”

“I’m sorry, Tillie, but nobody pays ten dollars to hear about that.”

“I gave up urging the young ladies in the audience to dress modestly. I gave up reminding the young men about the sanctity of marriage. I have been willing to stay, as you put it, on message, and now you ask me to hold back even that. There are limits to my forbearance.” She sighed. “But what good does the message do, if no one comes to hear it? Would you send two letters to the editor this week?”

“Any editor you like. I’m sorry. I really am. Human trafficking. We’re against it.”

“And would you kindly tell me when your reviewer has been and gone?”

“I’ll bring you the review, the second I have it,” he promised.

“Good day, Mr. Griggs.” She was the draft that slammed the door shut; she was the click in the lock.

Jim stood on the threshold, blinking against the sudden loss of all that sunlight bouncing around the white plaster box of the Meeting House.

One last stop. He clambered down a trail to the riverbank, to the spot where his oldest ghost tended long-dissolved fishing traps. Jim had never been able to get a name out of the old Lenni Lenape guy who’d been haunting these banks for three centuries. The guy didn’t seem to hold a grudge about what had happened to his tribe, didn’t seem to want anything in particular—never said a word, in fact, though he did sometimes hum. All Jim had figured out to do on tourless afternoons was to bow and bring an offering of cornmeal. Some days, like today, the Lenape fisherman nodded in acknowledgment. Some days, not.

His dealings with the dead finished for the day, Jim drove to the fancy liquor store his girlfriend owned. At the corner of Bridge Street and North Church stood the fine brick Victorian that housed Spirits of Lambertville. Jim parked in one of the employees-only spots in the back, then came around to the front door to replenish the stack of ghost tour fliers that Liz let him put by the cash register. It was how he’d first met her, these eight years past. Hey, you’re Spirits of Lambertville, I’m Ghosts of Lambertville. Can I tape a flier in your window?

When the chime rang to announce the open door, Liz Bartram looked up from the Oktoberfest display she was building and said, “Happy birthday!”

Jim stopped in the doorframe. “Happy birthday? You’re two weeks early.”

“But I found the perfect thing, and it couldn’t wait. You’ll see. It’s in the back room.”

“Oh, is it now?” The back room was a fine and private place.

Liz laughed. “Come on.” She made sure the new kid was set at the register, and then she took Jim’s hand. “You’re gonna love it.”

She led him past Chardonnay, past Merlot, on beyond Malbec, into the narrow corridor that ran between the wall and the refrigeration units. When they were far enough into the corridor that Jim was sure the new kid wouldn’t see, he pinned Liz against the wall to kiss her.

“No, really,” said Liz. “There’s a present.”

“That so?” Jim said. One undone button got his hand into her shirt.

“Customers . . .” she protested, but her eyes rolled back into her head a little. “Oh.”

“I have spent the entire day giving dead people what they like best. Now here I am on a roll, and I’m all out of ghosts. Do you have time for exactly what you like?”

“Um. No. Dinner?” She extricated his hand, but not in any hurry. “You cook, and . . .”

“And you’ll bring the wine?”

“Of course. Now come see your present.” She buttoned her shirt back up and went to unlock the steel door to her office. Opened it. “Weird,” she said.

“What?”

“Nothing. Well, not quite nothing. I have to admit, this is the weirdest thing I’ve ever given you.”

He followed her in. Among the dinged secondhand steel office furnishings stood a finely made cherry cabinet with swooping Art Nouveau lines. Carved into the door of its center compartment was a stylized rose, over which hovered a stylized bee. The compartment had a decorative lock, and in it was a decorative key whose finial was cast to resemble a cross-section of honeycomb.

It was as fine a piece as any he’d seen in Lambertville’s antique shops. The only weird thing about it was that Liz was giving it to him.

“Furniture?” he said. She must have spent a small fortune on it. What was she trying to say here? Jim liked living alone in his tiny cottage with his own mismatched things.

“The furniture’s incidental,” said Liz. “It’s haunted. I got it on eBay.”

What a relief. And it would’ve been cheap, too. People always underpriced haunted stuff. “Thank you,” said Jim, very relieved.

“I bet nobody ever gave you a ghost for your birthday before.” She looked very pleased with herself.

“Honey, this might be just what I need. It’s time to shake things up a little, give folks who’ve done the tour before a reason to come back this year.”

She perched on her desk, a huge smile on her face. “It’s exactly what you like, then?”

“As long as you’re still coming to dinner, this is exactly what I like. Should we open it?”

“Would you do the honors?” She gestured to the key as if she were the evening gown girl on some kind of game show. The Ghost Is Right, maybe, or Wheel of Incarnation.

The key turned smoothly, and the lock gave with a surprisingly loud clunk. Jim could hardly breathe for anticipation when he pulled the cabinet door toward him.

No ghost.

Instead he found a scrapbook, a shop steward’s badge from a welder’s union, and an instrument case that turned out to contain a stringless ukulele.

“Hello?” said Jim.

The pages of the scrapbook fluttered and fell open to a newspaper clipping from 1938. A fierce young woman stared out of a yellowed photograph. LABOR DISPUTE ENDS IN 7 ARRESTS, read the headline.

Jim read the photo’s caption. “Zelda Timmerman. Care to show yourself?”

The stapler on Liz’s desk rose into the air and hurtled at the office’s one high, barred window. Shattered glass flew everywhere.

“Hey!” said Liz.

Well, this one couldn’t be harder to tame than the Cruncher. And if she was a labor union agitator, she might not be that different from Tillie. “Ms. Timmerman,” said Jim, “if you would be so kind as to get back into this cabinet without further ado, we can discuss your concerns soon in a more congenial setting.”

Liz’s award from the Chamber of Commerce, all chunky molded lucite, leapt from its place as a paperweight to clonk Jim on the forehead. Best of Lambertville, the award said, and now Jim’s forehead would bear the red imprint of those words in reverse.

But the ghost hadn’t been able to muster enough force to knock Jim out. That was all he needed to know.

“I do summon and abjure thee, Zelda Timmerman, to return to the, ah, furniture from which you came!”

And she did, with a sound sort of like a vacuum cleaner when it catches something too big to swallow.

Jim slammed the cupboard closed, turned the lock, and pocketed the key. “You okay, Liz?”

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.”

“No, everything’s perfect. I’m fine, and she kicks ass. Best present ever. No, I’m serious, best present ever.”

Liz went out front to break open a bag of ice for his head, and then the two of them huddled in the office to make some calls. It took her no time to find someone to fix the broken window. It took Jim a while to call around the antique shops until he found one with a couple of strong backs he could borrow. Though he couldn’t keep Zelda in his house—it was way too small and too far off the route of the walking tour—he couldn’t very well keep Zelda in Liz’s shop, either. He’d have to ask one of his ghosts to take her on as a roommate. The last thing Jim needed was for Tillie to get preachier about her politics, so the Meeting House was right out. Fortunately, Travis seemed to be immune to ideas of any kind.

An hour later, Jim and his hired strong backs climbed the stairs to the drowned frat boy’s loft. “Hey, Travis!” Jim shouted to be heard over the Scooby Doo video. “Got you a roommate!”

“Whatever, dude. Pop me another beer, will you?” Travis hadn’t been able to drink since his death in 1987, but he seemed to find the idea of beer comforting.

The guys from the antique shop set Zelda’s cabinet carefully down along the tall center of the slope-ceilinged attic and then stood around nervously a moment, waiting for a tip. They tried not to stare at Travis, who was fading irregularly into and out of sight while he sprawled on the couch.

Jim pulled a can of Bud out of the little cube fridge in the corner, and only then slipped the strong backs a couple of fives to make them go away. Once he and Travis were alone with the cabinet, Jim said, “I’m hoping you can get her to chill out some. She’s got a temper.”

“I’ve dated psycho bitches before. Never lived with one, though.” Travis didn’t even look up from the television.

“I think you might be a little young for her,” said Jim. “Don’t mind us.” He pulled a piece of chalk from his pocket and drew a circle on the floor around the cabinet, breathed his will into the line to let nothing out, and then reached across, key in hand, to try his luck again. Silently, the little door opened.

The ukulele case swung out at Jim’s face, only to rebound on the boundary rising from the chalk line. Jim flinched needlessly, hoped Zelda hadn’t noticed his flinching. “We can work this out, Zelda. I’m a very accommodating employer. It would be a whole lot easier for us to negotiate if you would show yourself. Please.”

A hazy memory of her—her memory of herself—sat perched in the cabinet, legs crossed provocatively, her hair coiffed in a style Jim had only ever seen in black and white movies. He guessed she must have died in the 1940’s. Her arms were folded resolutely across her chest, and her face wore a look of implacable disdain. She took in the room and addressed Travis. “Hey, kid? He treat you right?”

“Yeah.” Travis reached for his beer. His fingers passed through it, and he sighed. Never once did he take his eyes off the screen.

“You got a decent contract?”

Travis didn’t seem to notice she was still talking to him.

Jim said, “The ghosts who work on my tour all have different wants. Ad hoc arrangements have always served us well. The question before us is, what do you like best?”

“Monkeywrenching capitalism.” In life, she must have worn very, very red lipstick. “I didn’t catch your name.”

“Jim Griggs.” He held his hand out across his boundary, for her to shake. That was all it had taken to persuade Bill MacIntyre to come on board.

Arms still folded, she looked him up and down. Jim was in work boots, muddy-kneed jeans, and a threadbare Rutgers sweatshirt.

“You have the face of a boss,” she said. “There’s something of the rat about you.”

“Yeah, well, I double as the town rat-catcher. Rat-catcher, ghost-wrangler—either way, it ain’t a big stipend from the town. I’m just trying to make a living, as long as I’m still alive.” He still held out his hand for her to shake.

“You’re billeting me in your employee’s dwelling. Did you ask him first?”

“What?”

“I see. No. It would be premature to make a contract with you, Jim Griggs. You need a little humbling.” Her lips quirked into one of the nastier smiles Jim had seen this side of the Cruncher’s lair.

“You had your chance,” said Jim. He slammed shut the cabinet and locked it, and the spectral form of Zelda Timmerman dispersed like so much smoke. “Travis,” he said, “are you ever going to get the hang of those chains?” Jim had brought them for Travis to clank in classic Scooby Doo style, but the kid had never worked himself up to lift them.

“Way too hard, Boss.”

So Jim dug them out from under the couch and wrapped them around the rattling cabinet. He didn’t want to scrape up the finish on that gorgeous cherry wood, but he had worked too hard on building the tour business all these years to risk a bad Halloween season review over niceties. “We’ll discuss this later, Zelda,” he said. “You’re a sharp lady. I’m sure you’ll see reason.” He’d taken the measure of her strength in Liz’s office. Between the chains and the chalk circle, she wasn’t going to get out until he was ready to deal with her. Or, more to the point, until she was ready to make a deal with him.

Meanwhile, he had groceries to buy, dinner to cook, and Liz to thank for what he was still sure would turn out to be major asset in the long run. At the A&P, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and called her to propose herb-crusted lamb chops.

“Zinfandel, then,” she said. “Are you gonna do that thing with the fennel bulb?”

“Fennel bulb. Check.”

“I’ve got the perfect Zin. Are you okay?”

“Fine. Guess my head’s pretty hard.”

“And our friend?”

“She’s on ice for the moment.”

“Like your head should be. Take care of yourself. See you at eight.”

Back in the tiny kitchen in his tiny cottage, Jim labored cheerfully away over the fennel bulb. Nothing like working with nostalgic dead people to make a guy appreciate eating. He had his lamb chops, his girl, and his view of the Delaware Valley from a cottage on a hillside. As long as he could keep all that, he had enough.

Liz arrived at eight on the dot. The sight of her walking up the driveway was more than enough.

Halfway through the bottle of Zinfandel, they were finally past the how-was-the-rest-of-your-day stage, and conversation turned to ghost-in-a-box auctions on eBay. Every day, somebody somewhere was trying to sell a ghost in a box, but nearly all of them were fakes. It was a matter of some consternation among less experienced ghost tour operators. “How,” Jim asked, “did you know which one to bid on?”

Liz refilled her glass. “The descriptions of the other ones sounded scary, and I figured, even if they were legit, you already had scary covered. This one mostly sounded pissed off, so I guessed she was real. I mean, if I were dead, I’d be pretty pissed off about it.”

Pouring out the last of the bottle, Jim said, “Do you still have the listing?”

“I can find it. Want me to email it to you in the morning?”

“Please.”

She laughed. “You should see your face right now. Come on. If you don’t have the good sense to worry about things that can really screw up your life, like the IRS, why would you worry about a ghost? You’re a professional.”

He was not about to let her get on his case about the whole tax evasion thing again, so he put on a brave face about Zelda and changed the subject. “Should I break out the baklava?”

“Later,” said Liz. “I seem to recall someone promised me exactly what I like.”

They didn’t get around to the baklava until morning.

Friday, Jim’s job was to get a feel for the traffic of the town. Half the old houses in Lambertville were bed and breakfasts. On any given day, collectors from New York and Philadelphia were trawling the galleries, antique shops, and artists’ studios. And on weekends, the town filled further with city people who came to Lambertville to get away from each other. Sometimes they brought their kids, to show them a town that had more trees than residents; sometimes they were fleeing their kids, too. Summers, Jim ran the tour every day and got mostly bored teenagers whose parents were antiquing. Decembers, Jim ran the tour as a matter of principle, but all the people who should have been his fares were running frantically from shop to shop with lists of gift recipients in their hands. And then the lean months came, when an old canal town laid out for strolling was too snow-laden to draw the New Yorkers and Philadelphians. When spring’s rains drove the Delaware to flood, all Jim had to live on was his stipend from the town and the hours he could pick up at Liz’s liquor store.

But oh, October. In October, Jim was Lambertville’s most eminent citizen, a draw in his own right, the guy boosting business for all those fancy people with their fancy shops. October determined how many hours he had to pick up in February breaking down cardboard boxes for Liz. October kept the truck running, and October would replace the truck when the truck could run no more.

So on this fair September Friday, Jim strolled the cobbled sidewalks, smiling at every tourist face he met. He dropped in at various shops to flatter those proprietors who had seats on the Chamber of Commerce. Michael, who let Jim stow Travis in his attic, wanted a word about the new tenant. Surrounded by the one-of-a-kind ceramic and blown glass pieces in his fine craftwares gallery, Michael looked like an artist’s work, himself, in a hand-painted silk shirt. He took Jim aside and said, “What the hell is going on up there? I thought you said Travis was too lazy to rattle his chains.”

Oh, no. “Travis is plenty lazy.” Jim listened for clanking. Didn’t hear any. “I’ll look in on them.”

“The delivery guys are saying you put a poltergeist in my attic. Look around you, Jim. I, of all people, cannot afford a poltergeist.”

To humor him, Jim looked around. He was already keenly aware of the fragility of Michael’s goods. “You got some real beauties in here. I’ll go sort this out.”

Up and up the stairs. Something wasn’t right. Jim couldn’t put his finger on it at first, but by the time he was on the last turn of the stairs he knew.

The television was off.

The attic was as noisy as ever, but with the sound of . . . a ukulele?

Definitely a ukulele.

Jim climbed to the empty doorframe and peered in to see Travis conducting his own little light show to accompany the strumming that emanated from the sealed cabinet. The chalk line was still intact. Zelda was playing a Groucho Marx song Jim remembered from the black and white movies his dad had made him watch when he was a kid.

“You guys doing okay?” he said.

“It’s cool,” said Travis.

“Just you wait until I get these chains off,” said Zelda. Her lock rattled, but held

Jim said, “I would have liked to bring you on board right away, Zelda. I would have liked to give you pride of place on my tour. For the month of October, I could still make you a star. Wouldn’t you like to . . .”

Zelda started playing the Internationale on her ukulele, singing about the coming of the glorious workers’ revolution.

“Right,” said Jim. “Monday, then. Travis, you’re still set for tonight?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“And you might remind your roommate that Michael, the nice guy downstairs, lets you guys haunt up here for free.”

“Yeah sure.” Travis shuffled his feet.

Zelda grumbled, “I can smell respectable bourgeois taste from here.”

Not entirely at ease, Jim went down to give Michael his assurances, and returned to his rounds until sunset, when he went to the visitors’ center to see who turned up for ghost-viewing.

That night’s tour was a beautiful tour, a perfect tour in every way but one.

The fares all paid cheerfully for their tickets. They were a nice mix of pierced teenagers and families with goggle-eyed kids. Not one of them looked to be a problem—no amateur ghost hunters with goofy equipment, no haughty occultists, nobody with a big skeptical chip on his shoulder. Jim showed them what there was to see.

The Lenape fisherman went about his lyrical business, cooking his ghost of a fish on a real stick over a spectral fire. Even the pierced teenagers ate up Jim’s patter about the noble, wronged Lenape people, and watched the fisherman with a reverent hush. Then at the Meeting House, Tillie told the sad tale of how her well had been poisoned by slave-catchers when she was found out as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Jim hadn’t known she had a talent for the gruesome, but her description of her dying day was morbid enough that he resolved to write three letters to the editor as a thank-you to her.

In the cigar boutique’s storeroom, Bill MacIntyre gave his usual soliloquy about the abiding affection of the dead for the living, about how important it was to him to keep an eye on his sons while they ran the family business. Bill left out the bit about how his haunting freaked out his relatives and shook their faith in the afterlife he’d raised his kids to believe in. It was Jim’s considered opinion that a good evening’s entertainment ought to touch all the deepest, least complex human emotions.

The Cruncher growled and spat rat bones from its lair, and ventured on all fours just close enough to the edge of its concrete pipe for all the mothers on the tour to let out little shrieks and grip their children tighter. In the alley by the fine craftwares shop, Travis gave the crowd a good startle, wailing and groaning, filling the air with the flashing lights that were his only real talent. As always, when Jim hustled his audience into Michael’s shop to warm up, the fares found things to buy.

A beautiful run, a perfect Friday, except that the reviewer from Bizarro Jersey wasn’t there to see it.

Nothing for it but to call Suzy. Jim paced in the alleyway where Travis had given such a good light show. “Pick up, pick up, pick up,” he muttered to his cell phone.

“Jim?” said Suzy. “It’s kind of late to be calling.”

“Tour just got out. Are you sure you had the right guy?”

“I’m telling you, Jim, you can’t miss him. I just talked to Phyllis, who does the Ghosts of the Revolutionary War bus tours, and she said the Boston guy held everybody up at Monmouth Battlefield so he could photograph what he said was Molly Pitcher’s aura.”

“Her aura?” said Jim. “Some people will believe anything.”

“No kidding. Anyhow, he’s our reviewer. Big Revolutionary War buff, Phyllis says. I think it’s a Boston thing.”

“What if . . . What if I don’t rate a review anymore?”

Suzy laughed. “If they’re still sending a reviewer to visit Mr. Hamilton, then you totally rate a review.”

“But after last year . . .”

“Well, you know what I think about your little shenanigan, but the annual feature is ‘New Jersey’s Top Ghost Tours Reviewed and Rated.’ You’re still up there at the top. Bizarro Jersey is going to have something to say about your show.”

“Thanks, Suzy. Thanks.”

Jim went to pay his respects to Michael and then climbed the back stairs to the attic. Travis had left his Scooby Doo video running. All Jim wanted was to check on Zelda, but the chalk circle was broken and the cabinet was gone.

Jim stood at the head of the stairs, scratching his head.

“Travis?” he said. No answer. “Travis, get your posthumous ass up here!” Nothing. Jim hated to have to do it, but he pulled from his wallet the pledge pin that Travis had worn on his backward baseball cap on the last day of his life. “Travis Srocynski!”

“What?” said the sullen voice that oozed up the stairs.

“Where did your roommate go?”

“I dunno.” He was a terrible liar.

“I sealed her in there pretty good.”

“You sure did, Boss,” Travis agreed.

Jim turned the pledge pin in his hand, examining it in the blue television light. “You talk to her any?”

“Miss Timmerman told me I had nothing to lose but my chains.”

“You remember the Cold War, Travis? I know it ended after your time, but the upshot is, we won. I don’t need to be hearing any Marxist bullshit from you.”

Travis said, “It wasn’t right you should chain her up in a box, man. And I got the chain off her all by myself. How do you like that?”

Worrisome, especially in that defiant tone. It would have been good news a week ago, but now that Jim wasn’t the uncontested boss, he wasn’t so pleased. “Yeah? Well, let’s see how you like The Communist Manifesto once you start losing stuff.” Jim unplugged the little cube fridge, pulled out the remains of the six pack of Bud, and headed out the door, beer tucked under one arm. “You’re grounded until tomorrow night, young man.” He turned and, taking the pledge pin in his free hand, traced a binding sigil in the air at the top of the stairs. Zelda’s chains had been heavy, but simple. The sigil might not be all that strong, but Jim could still count on it to be too complicated for Travis.

Jim drove straight to Liz’s place. She lived in the upper half of the town’s former firehouse. The lower half, much renovated for the purpose, was her personal wine cellar.

“Bad day, honey?” she said when she opened the door. “Come on in.”

“It was a perfect day, except that everything is about to blow up. Can you show me that eBay listing?”

“I emailed it to you this morning. Hey, you have to try this Riesling.” She poured him a glass while her laptop powered up.

He downed the Riesling in one gulp.

“That’s no way to treat good wine,” Liz protested.

“Zelda’s trouble.”

Liz kissed him. “She’s nothing you can’t handle.”

But the description in the eBay listing suggested otherwise. Zelda had a history of smashing crockery, breaking windows, scaring off pets, slashing tires, and transporting her cabinet back to the houses of people who’d tried to get rid of her. She might not be worse than the Cruncher, but she was a lot more versatile. Only ghost experts should bid on this item, the listing said. If eBay would let us, we’d pay you to take it off our hands.

“See?” said Liz. “Nothing you can’t handle.”

He couldn’t bring himself to tell her how far she’d overestimated him.

“I’ll think of something,” he said.

Her face fell.

“Best birthday present ever,” Jim assured her.

“You’re staying tonight, right?”

“Thanks.”

They finished off the Riesling in a somber mood. It was, now that Jim could slow down to notice, very good Riesling, with exceptionally bright notes of apple and rose.

No way could he have gotten to sleep without Liz. Zelda was on the loose somewhere, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. His mind churned through everything he knew about ghost management—little bits he’d gotten from books, and tricks of the trade from friendly ghost tour operators whose