A Bogie in the Boat Read online

  You know what doesn’t go down well with

  morning coffee? A body in a canal.

  A BOGIE IN THE BOAT

  When a neighbor finds a grim discovery in the waterways of Venice Beach, Linx Maxwell gets an unexpected visitor in the form of a new ghost. The only problem? Her new ghost doesn’t see eye to eye with her old one.

  Detective Frank Bogle doesn’t know what to make of the young victim. Haunting Linx is his job, and he doesn’t want company. All the same, he can hardly deny that the excitement of an unsolved crime intrigues him. The new ghost claims he was murdered—and the trail leads right to the home of Linx’s new client.

  Two ghosts? One is bad enough! Linx will do anything to get rid of the unwelcome company, including snooping around a tech millionaire’s house, posing as the victim’s girlfriend, and catching the attention of the very handsome—and very alive—Detective Lee.

  Copyright © 2018 by Elizabeth Hunter

  ISBN: 9781941674185

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Recurve Press, LLC

  PO Box 4034

  Visalia, CA 93278

  USA

  Cover: Damonza

  Edited by: Victory Editing

  Paperback Edition: July 2018

  A Bogie in the Boat

  A Linx & Bogie Mystery

  Elizabeth Hunter

  Contents

  1. Now You See Me

  2. Too Coincidental to Be a Coincidence

  3. It Ain’t a Party Unless You Bring the Bolt Cutters

  4. No Surprise Is Good When It Happens in the Bathroom

  5. Lying Liars Who… Okay, I Was the Only Liar

  6. Come Hither or Stay Away?

  7. Using Loved Ones for Dastardly Plans

  8. The Part Where I Piss Everyone Off

  9. A Lot of Questions Don’t Have Answers

  Epilogue: I’ll Be Seeing You

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  Preview: INK

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Elizabeth Hunter

  1

  Now You See Me

  It was Saturday morning at my grandmother’s house, and Bogie and I were reading the paper. Or rather, I was trying to read the paper and Bogie was—

  “Page,” he barked.

  I rolled my eyes, reached over, and turned the page of the Sports section. It was the only part of the paper Frank ever wanted to read, but since he was a ghost, he couldn’t exactly turn the pages himself. I picked up my mobile phone and added an event to my calendar for the next weekend. The editor had called the exhibit at LACMA “pretentious and unmoving.” Maybe it made me “perverse and masochistic,” but reviews like that made me want to see it more.

  “Page.”

  “I am not your secretary,” I muttered. Then I turned the page anyway. It was easier than listening to him complain.

  “If you were my secretary, I’d fire you for having pink hair.” He was wearing a pin-striped navy suit that morning. I’m sure any secretary Detective Frank Bogle’d had in his abbreviated life would have been dressed as snazzily as Frank. Pencil skirt, stylish blouse, and horn-rimmed glasses maybe. A no-nonsense gal for a no-nonsense detective. The thought made me smile.

  “What are you smiling about?”

  “Did you even have a secretary?”

  “The department did. Dora.” His slightly transparent form shivered. “She was terrifying but efficient.”

  “Yeah.” I turned the page and skimmed my finger down the upcoming events. “I’d suck at being a secretary.” My finger stopped at a mention of the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. “Hey! The Big Heat is playing next Sunday at the Egyptian.”

  That pulled his attention away from the football scores. “Really?”

  “Yeah, you want to— Ah, shit. Next Sunday is Farah’s opening in Santa Monica. We can’t go.”

  Frank gave me a dirty look and looked back at his paper. “Page.”

  He was pissed off at me, but I couldn’t do anything about that. I’d promised Farah when I saw him last week. Unfortunately, Frank wasn’t the kind of ghost who could go where he wanted. He was stuck with me.

  In truth, most ghosts didn’t have that kind of freedom. My grandmother saw spirits who were attached to geography, places that held special meaning for them in life. My mother connected with ghosts who hung around loved ones. Well, usually it was loved ones. Sometimes ghosts hung around hated ones. Those ghosts were a lot less fun.

  And I had Frank. Just Frank. He was my bogie, had been since I was thirteen. According to my nan, not one of the Maxwell women had ever been stuck with just one ghost her whole life. I was praying I wasn’t going to be the first.

  Not that I didn’t like Frank. He was practically part of the family at this point. But he could be a little—

  “Page!”

  I slammed down my paper and gritted my teeth.

  “What?” he said. “I’ve said it three times now.”

  Just to be contrary, I stood and went to refill my coffee cup. Frank loved coffee almost as much as he loved cigarettes. So partly I wanted more coffee and partly I just wanted to annoy him.

  “Seriously?” he said, tapping phantom fingers on the kitchen table. “You’re such a little kid sometimes.”

  “And you’re more than a little dead.” I refilled my coffee and leaned against the counter. “So guess who gets to decide when your page gets turned. Coffee?” I waved the steaming cup at him.

  He fought a smile. “Now you’re just being mean.”

  I heard a tap at the door and figured it was old Mrs. Lamberti from across the street. She was a friend of my nan’s and would usually come by on Saturday mornings. I went to the door and opened it just as she was raising her hand to knock again.

  “Morning, Mrs. L! Nan’s not here—she went to the farmers’ market with my mom—but you’re welcome to come in for a cup of coffee if you want. She’ll probably be back pretty soon.”

  Mrs. Lamberti went a little pink in the cheeks. “Well, you might be able to help me, Lindsay.”

  All my friends called me Linx, but my grandmother’s friends watched me grow up as a Lindsay, and it seemed rude to correct an eighty-two-year-old woman. “Sure, what’s up? Did you need help moving something?”

  I’m about five foot two inches and one hundred and thirty pounds soaking wet, but Mrs. Lamberti was even smaller than me. Plus I was strong. I’d climbed plenty of walls and fences when I was a teenager, and I was pretty fit from hauling ladders and paint buckets around.

  “Well…” The pink was still there. “It’s not moving something. But I know Peggy says you take after her with the… other things.” She crossed herself quickly, and I realized she was talking about the “ghost thing.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Gotcha.”

  My grandmother and my mom didn’t make a secret of the fact they saw ghosts; most people just thought they were nuts. But Venice Beach used to be pretty forgiving to eccentrics. These days, not so much. But then, nobody was going to say anything to my nan. My grandmother had lived in this neighborhood longer than anyone except Mrs. Lamberti.

  “Why don’t you come in for coffee?” I held the door open and ushered her to the kitchen. “Tell me wh
at’s up. I might be able to help.”

  “Well, it was the strangest thing,” she started. “You know my hip bothers me in the mornings, so I usually don’t go down to the water until it warms up.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Frank raised an eyebrow when we walked in, any irritation with me long forgotten. He lived for this stuff. He’d been a homicide detective when he was alive. He was constantly dragging me into awkward situations that could get me arrested because they were none of my business. He regularly ignored my objections about that fact. Having something weird show up on our doorstep was probably his version of Christmas.

  “So you don’t go down to the water in the morning because of your hip,” I prompted. “But did you do something different today?”

  She sipped the cup of coffee I’d put in front of her. She took it black like my nan. “I did. I just felt like I needed to walk out on the back deck this morning. The idea just wouldn’t leave me alone.”

  Frank stood up. “She’s got a ghost. Let’s go.”

  “Will you just calm down?” I said. “Let her talk.”

  Mrs. Lamberti looked around in alarm. “I’m sorry?”

  I waved a hand. “That was just Frank. Go on. So you went out to the back deck?”

  Mrs. Lamberti’s place was a gorgeous wood-shingled house, and it sat on a quiet corner of the Sherman Canal. It was easily worth a few million dollars these days, but she’d lived there for over fifty years. Mr. Lamberti had been a builder, and he’d set his family up well.

  Mrs. Lamberti was still looking around the kitchen with wide eyes, but she continued. “I went out on the back deck and noticed the plants needed watering.”

  “Okay…?”

  “And when I went down to get the hose, I saw that little boat my grandson keeps on our dock. You know the one?”

  “Yep.” I couldn’t figure out where this was going. I refilled my coffee cup and sat down, prepared to settle in for a nice long ramble with Mrs. L.

  “So there was the boat that Camden keeps,” she continued, “and it was fine… But there was a dead man in it, so that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  I spit coffee all over the newspaper.

  “Hot damn,” Frank said. “This weekend just got a lot more interesting.”

  “Why aren’t we calling the police again?” I asked as I walked Mrs. Lamberti back to her house, Frank trailing behind me.

  “What’s that, dear?”

  “Nothing, Mrs. L. Let me just get you settled in the kitchen, and I’ll take a look in the backyard to see if I can get anything.” I glared at Frank. “And then we are definitely calling the police.”

  “I just want to be sure there isn’t anything… odd on the back deck. You understand?”

  “Of course.”

  If the victim had a violent death, it was very likely he’d be hanging around. I’d be able to sense him, but I wouldn’t be able to see or talk to him. I could only see and talk to Frank. I’d already called my nan. This kind of stuff was her department.

  “We need to take a look at the scene before the police come,” Frank said. “Once they’re in, it’ll be harder to get information. I need to see the body.”

  “No, you do not,” I hissed. “If this guy was murdered—”

  “Oh, I don’t think it was anything like that,” Mrs. Lamberti said. “I didn’t see any blood. I think he was one of those sad young people with the drugs.”

  “Well, we’ll check it out anyway.”

  Frank looked deflated. Drug overdose wasn’t nearly as exciting as murder. “It could still be murder.”

  “The fact that you’re hoping it was murder should be disturbing to you, Frank.”

  Mrs. Lamberti was used to Maxwell women talking to people she couldn’t see. Luckily, modern technology had come through for mediums. I grabbed the Bluetooth earpiece for my phone and stuck it in my ear. That way if I was yelling into thin air, people would just assume I was rude, not crazy.

  I crossed the street and opened Mrs. Lamberti’s side door—she’d left it unlocked, of course—and started to make coffee. Frank was practically bouncing around the room he was so impatient. But I got the old woman settled with the coffeepot going before I walked toward the french doors leading out to the enormous back deck.

  I took a deep breath and walked outside, prepared to feel the itch that told me a spirit was hanging around, but all I felt was Bogie.

  “Hey, kid, come over here.” He was already standing at the edge of the dock, looking down into the water. “Mrs. L is probably right.” He sounded disappointed. “Looks like an overdose.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “So do I have to come and look?”

  “Just get over here, Linx. It’s not that bad.”

  I walked to the edge of the deck and looked down. Sure enough, a young Caucasian man was lying in the bottom of the red rowboat Mrs. Lamberti’s grandson used on the canals. The victim had brown hair, and his eyes were closed. His mouth gaped open and his lips were a little blue. He was definitely dead. His skin was pale, and a scatter of freckles stood out on his nose. Something about the freckles made me ridiculously sad.

  The boat was deep, so it didn’t surprise me no one else had spotted the body. It was early enough that pedestrian traffic hadn’t really started up, and few neighbors could have seen the body from their back decks, even if they’d been looking.

  “You know…” I cocked my head, looking at the dead guy who was sprawled at an angle. “He doesn’t look like an addict.”

  “Addicts look like everyone, kid.”

  “You know what I mean.” Venice Beach had a lot of homeless people, and drugs were a problem. It wasn’t uncommon to find drug paraphernalia on the street. My nan had tried to help several “wanderer friends” over the years with mixed results. My mom claimed that many of the homeless had spirits hanging around them, which was rarely a good thing.

  But this guy… didn’t look homeless. His clothes were clean. His hair was trimmed. “He looks more like a tech guy than a junkie.” Except he had a needle in his arm. That much was pretty obvious.

  Frank dissolved and reappeared in the boat next to the body. He couldn’t move anything unless he was really, really agitated, but he bent down for a closer look. “He’s been here for a few hours,” he said. “I’m seeing some bruising on his neck. Fingers maybe?”

  “Was he choked?”

  “Will you get down here?” he asked. “I can’t lift his shirt, and I’m betting there are—”

  “Fingerprints. Physical evidence. DNA maybe?” I crossed my arms. “None of which are mine and none of which are going to be mine, Bogie. I’m not touching that body.”

  “If someone held him down and put the needle in his arm, this is a murder.”

  “I agree. But you know who’s going to have to figure that out? The police. Who we are calling right now.” I pulled out my phone. “I don’t feel any spirits around here, so—”

  “Oh my god,” said a voice beside me. “If my mother thinks I overdosed on drugs, she’s going to flip out.”

  I turned with wide eyes to see the dead guy standing on the dock next to me.

  And then I flipped out.

  Mrs. Lamberti’s neighbors bought my explanation for the scream because I called the police and reported the body right after they came running out to their decks. I wasn’t screaming about the dead body though. It was the ghost who was sitting next to me on the bench. The ghost whom I could see clear as day. The ghost who was not Bogie.

  “Will you calm down?” Frank said. “You’re acting like you’ve never seen a spirit before.”

  “I see you, Frank. That’s it. That’s all I see. Why the hell am I seeing this guy?”

  The neighbors were looking at my one-sided conversation, so I held my cell phone even as I dropped my voice.

  “I’m dead,” the ghost kept saying over and over again. “I can’t believe I’m dead.”

  Frank asked, “What do you remember?”

&
nbsp; The young man turned to Frank, narrowed his eyes. “You’re a cop, aren’t you?”

  Frank smiled. “And you’re a crook.”

  “What?” I asked. “Why is he a crook?”

  “Because only a crook makes a cop that fast. What’s your game, kid?”

  He hesitated, then said, “I’m a thief. Small stuff. Nothing violent. And I don’t remember what happened.”

  I asked Frank, “Can you really see him? I thought you said other spirits came through with static.”

  “They usually do.” He looked pleased. “I think I can see him and talk to him better because you can see him too.”

  I put a hand over my face. “This is awful.”

  “What?” Frank asked. “Why? This is great!”

  “No, it is not,” I hissed under my breath. “What if he gets stuck to me too? I’ve already got one of you. I don’t want another one.”

  “Hey,” the dead guy said. “I’m not that bad. And I don’t do drugs. Can someone tell my mom that, because she’s gonna freak out.”

  I said, “Dude. You’re dead. She’s going to freak out anyway.”

  He sighed and his shoulders slumped. “Shit. I can’t believe I’m really dead. This is not what I was expecting death to be like.”

  “Did you ever really think about it?” I asked him.

  “Nah.” He looked guilty.

  “Maybe you can just tell us who killed you,” I said. “Then we can… help you to the light or something.”

  His eyes went wide. “There’s a light?”

  “There’s not always a light,” Frank said.

  “Well, there ought to be!” I stood and paced the deck. “When is Nan getting here?”

  “Miss Maxwell?” A voice spoke from the french doors. “Are you Lindsay Maxwell?”