"I think I'd like you to leave. Right now." Mavis Schuyler glared at her guest with the laser look that she usually reserved for slow clerks at Bloomingdale's and inept parking valets. The nerve of this woman coming to her home and announcing that someone living at Schuyler Manor was linked to some nobody's death twenty years earlier!
Dee Dee Cooper was perched nervously on the edge of a couch in the living room. Although she looked as if there was nothing she'd like to do more than jump up and run from the room, she didn't move a muscle. "I realize that I might be a touch presumptuous dropping in on you like this," she began. Mavis cut her off immediately.
"I think you're a little more than a 'touch' presumptuous. A wallop would be more like it. How dare you come over here and make false accusations!"
"I'm only trying to get to the bottom of this mystery," Dee Dee replied. "You have no idea what it's like living in that house. That poor woman's spirit is still there and she's so noisy! Always knocking things over and waking my husband and me up in the middle of the night. We haven't had a decent night of sleep since we moved in."
"I hardly see how that's my problem."
"It isn't your problem but wouldn't you like to help us if you can?"
"Not particularly."
"What's going on, babe?" Peter entered the living room dressed in sweat pants, a weight lifting belt and nothing else, his bare chest glistening with sweat. "Is something wrong?"
"Nothing I can't handle," Mavis snapped. "And please don't sit down, Peter. You're all sweaty."
"Sorry. I was just working out when I heard your voice. You sounded upset."
"That's my fault," Dee Dee informed him. "I'm afraid I have upset your--wife."
"We aren't married," Mavis said.
"Yet," Peter put in.
Mavis ignored him. "Now would you kindly get the hell out of my house?"
"What are you two talking about that has you so worked up?" Peter inquired.
"We have a ghost living in our house," Dee Dee explained. "Her name is Mary Austin and she told us during a seance last night that whoever murdered her is living in Schuyler Manor. I came to talk to Mavis about it."
"Do you see what I'm dealing with?" Mavis said, whirling so that she was facing Peter. "This woman is obviously deranged! How could anyone living here have had anything to do with that poor woman's murder? I never knew her and Tyler was just a baby twenty years ago and even if Ron had known her, Ron's dead--"
But as Mavis spoke she noticed that the color was draining out of Peter's face, leaving him almost exactly the same shade of grey as his sweat pants.
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