“Sergeant Elliot asked us to search this house for a POW bracelet with his name on it,” he said, seemingly more to himself than anyone else. “Before we could do a proper search, it showed up on your guest’s wrist. What can we deduce from this?” He didn’t seem to expect an answer from us, which was fortunate.

“It looked like the old guy had been pulled out of bed by that lady ghost last night,” Maxine chipped in. “Do you think she was trying to get his bracelet off?”

“I don’t know,” Paul said through clenched teeth.

Melissa looked thoughtful, and also a little worried, as Paul’s agitation was pretty clear to everyone in the room. Maxine, hovering in the corner near the ceiling, chewed her lower lip and scrunched her eyes as if trying to see through the candlelight better. Alison sat down on the easy chair Mac had vacated and looked at me. “You’re going to have to teach me how to make instant coffee, Mom,” she said. “I can’t even manage that.”

“You do everything wonderfully, honey,” I told her. “I’m sure the coffee was just sitting on the shelf too long. Those expiration dates are really bogus, you know.” All of which was quite true. She smiled, but I don’t think she believed me.

“Could it be that Mac just happened to get a bracelet with Robert Elliot’s name on it?” Melissa asked. “They made lots of them, right?”

Paul shook his head. “Your grandmother says many groups did, but it’s too big a coincidence. An investigator should allow for coincidences, but never trust them.”

“Isn’t it about time you got in touch with Robert again?” Maxine asked Paul. “He can’t just leave us here in a hurricane to sort through his personal business.”

Paul’s mouth twitched. “You’re probably right, Maxie.” Without another word, he sank from the chandelier through the floor. It was an elegant move.

“He’s off to check the Ghosternet,” Alison said to herself. She stood up. “Probably time to turn on the radio and see where we stand.”

Melissa brought in the car-shaped radio and we listened to the news reports about the storm. It wasn’t encouraging. Millions were without power, and we were advised not to expect the lights to come on anytime soon. The weather forecast had improved somewhat, but power lines were down, whole homes on the shore had been destroyed by wind and water, and the winds would not die for at least another day.

Alison sighed. “I guess we can’t take down the window boards yet,” she said. “But I’ve checked on the basement, and so far we’ve been lucky; there’s only a tiny amount of water down there. We haven’t needed the sump pump yet.”

“Will the basement flood?” Melissa asked.

“If it hasn’t by now, I don’t think it will,” Alison told her. “Don’t worry.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Melissa said, although I’d bet that she was. “I was just wondering why it would be bad at other houses near here and not as much for us.”

“I think it’s the dunes in the back,” Alison answered. “They were built up a couple of years ago—was it when you owned the house, Maxie?”

Maxine turned abruptly, as if startled. “What? No, it was before I bought the place. They were already there. A beach erosion project, they told me when I bought it.”

“That probably kept the worst of the storm away from the house,” Alison told Melissa.

Maxine looked thoughtful. “I’m going to check on the roof,” she said, and ascended into the ceiling. That’s always been one of her favorite places to get away and think.

“That sounded like quite a branch in the backyard, Alison,” I told her.

Alison nodded. “I don’t have a chain saw, but maybe Tony will be able to come by. I hope their place is okay.”

Paul rose up from the basement and immediately told Alison, “I think I got through to Robert Elliot. He might be on his way here now.”

“You ‘think’?” Alison asked.

“It’s not a precise thing,” Paul reminded her. “It’s more like impressions, feelings, not direct communication. Sometimes I have to interpret a little.”

Since the wind seemed to be coming from the back of the house, off the ocean, Alison decided to see if the rain had abated to the point that she might take down some of the boards on the windows at the front. “We’ll need as much light as we can get while the power’s out,” she said, picking up a hammer from a toolbox she’d taken out of a hall closet. She saw Melissa head for the toolbox and held up a hand. “Hold up, young lady. Not a chance you’re going out there yet,” she said.

Melissa looked like she was going to argue, but I jumped in: “She’s right, Melissa. You don’t know how bad things are outside. If it’s too bad, Mom’s not going to stay out there, either.” And I made a point of looking at Alison with a serious expression on my face when I said it.

We all walked over to the front door to look outside. Our first post-storm look at the street was harrowing: There were dozens of branches, some very large, blocking the street. One had come down directly on top of a 1988 Chevy Monte Carlo that someone down the street had left parked in his driveway. A power line was definitely down. Alison’s across-the-street neighbor Mrs. Arbogast had lost a whole section of her picket fence. There was a telephone pole four houses down leaning at a precarious angle.

But the rain had mostly stopped, and while the wind was still blowing hard, it was nowhere near the strength it had been the night before. Alison got to work on the front windows, and the light that came in as each board came down was a relief, beginning what we knew would be a slow return to normalcy.

Paul hovered outside on the porch as Alison worked, and Melissa and I watched through the front window.

“We should have a plan for when Sergeant Elliot gets here,” Paul said, pacing with his feet buried in the front porch.

“Why are you so nervous?” Alison asked him. “We’ll get out the nice tablecloth and he won’t notice we’re serving leftovers.”

“Very funny,” Paul answered. “But this case has become very puzzling, and I’d like to have a strategy for our meeting with our client when he arrives.”

“We ask him where the heck he’s been, why he was so hot to get his hands on that bracelet and then disappeared, and whether he knows the deceased woman who was flying through my guest bedroom last night,” Alison suggested, pulling down another board. The wind grabbed the board as she brought it down and pulled it all the way to the other end of the porch. “Maybe I’ll just do every other board so we can have light, but leave some up,” Alison muttered to herself.

Melissa called through the closed window, “I don’t understand. We know the bracelet is on Mac’s arm. Why can’t we just ask him for it?”

“That’s an excellent point,” I told her.

Paul puffed out his lips and rubbed his hands together. “The real question is why Mac has the bracelet with Sergeant Elliot’s name, and why Sergeant Elliot asked us for it.”

“That’s two questions,” Alison pointed out.

Paul ignored her. “The point is, Sergeant Elliot must have known Mac has the bracelet. He asked us to find something that could only have gotten to this house with the man who wears it. Why doesn’t Sergeant Elliot just reach over and take the bracelet off Mac’s arm if he really feels that he needs it?”

“He doesn’t want Mac to know there’s a ghost following him?” Melissa suggested.

“Why not? Once he has the bracelet and moves on, it won’t matter.”

“I get that,” Alison said in answering Paul, “but clearly Sergeant Elliot needed help, or he wouldn’t have asked for it. What I’m really wondering about is whether the female ghost in Mac’s room last night was there for herself or because the sergeant wanted her to be there.” She pulled down the middle board on the last window and asked Melissa and me, “Is it lighter in there?”

“Much,” I told her. “How bad is the wind?” It’s not that I couldn’t see it, but it’s not the same thing as being outside.