Free What's a Ghoul to Do? by Victoria Laurie Page A

along?"
    "I'm not sure. The fact that he failed to mention him at any point in our conversation suggests it, and Andrew had to leave the bulk of his estate to someone. It might be that he left more to grandson than to son. Can you also do some digging about how much the old man left to each of them?"
    "Anything else?"
    "Yeah, if you can hack into the Back Bay's police department, I need the scoop on a break-in at Steven's place. He mentioned that there was an attempted burglary there recently, and tonight I saw someone in his bushes."
    "Someone in the bushes? Did you call the police?"
    "Yes. Might want to check out the results of that too. It's just too much of a coincidence that he's had two incidents in such a short period of time."
    "So, I'm supposed to get the equipment ready, pack the van, and do all this research?" Gilley asked me as his hands went to his hips.
    "Yeah. Right. Way too much on your plate. Let me take care of the equipment and the bank. We can both pack the van, and that should leave you enough time to find out what you need."
    "Deal. See you in the morning," he said, and breezed out the door.
    When he was gone I peeked under the canvas that covered Doc's cage. The bird was perched with his eyes closed, his breathing slow and steady. "Night, Doc," I whispered, and blew him a kiss. He opened one gray eye, then closed it again and went back to sleep.
    Walking down the hall to my bedroom, I ran a finger over my lips. They felt warm and a little swollen. I allowed the teeniest of smiles for myself, and trotted off to bed.
    * * * *
    The next morning promptly at nine I was in Gilley's kitchen, mug in hand and ready to eat some rolls. I found Gilley already up too, dressed in a white terry-cloth robe with hair damp from the shower. And even though I knew he'd had only a few hours' sleep, he honestly looked no worse for the wear.
    "Have fun last night?"
    "No, I had Bradley last night," Gilley said, giving me a wink.
    "Isn't he that real estate broker you've been working for leads?"
    "The very one," Gilley said happily.
    "Well, gee, Stella. I'm glad you got your groove back, not that you ever lost it in the first place," I said with a grin.
    Gilley came over to where I was standing and poured me a cup of coffee while he gave my hip a playful bump with his. "One last fling before we ship out," he said.
    "Uh-huh. Say, I've got to ask you something," I said. "And you're not going to like it."
    "Sounds serious," Gilley said as he peeked into the oven to check on the rolls.
    "No, it's not. It's just that I may need you to help me inside the house when we do this bust rather than staying in the van."
    It was a little-known fact that Gilley was terrified of ghosts. He was totally open to the idea of having me venture into spectrally inhabited places, but he'd be the last one to set foot in a haunted house until the ghost was clear. Lately he'd been begging off the smaller jobs and going with me only on the bigger busts, where his role was to drive me to the location and monitor my progress from the comfort and safety of the van. Gil had three monitors set up inside so that he could watch the feed from my night-vision camera and record the readings from my spectrometer and thermometer, but it was my firm belief that he turned off the video feed and only looked for spikes in temperature and electromagnetic energy.
    We never spoke about it in public, so as not to embarrass him, but Gilley was clearly terrified of things that might go bump in the night. "You must be joking," Gil said, his voice tinged with a little panic.
    "No, buddy, I'm afraid not. I need you to run interference with Steven so that he doesn't get in my way. My impression of him is that he's the curious type, and that he'll want to ask me all kinds of questions, so if you think it's okay for him to come along, then I'll need you to babysit him."
    "Why can't he stay in the van with me?" Gilley asked, and I noticed an even sharper rise in his voice.
    "You can