“I’m so grateful for your help,” Lauren said on Friday as she gestured to the door to her warehouse. “After you. This has been a challenging week, what with William and all.”

I pushed the door open and held it for her. “Of course. I’m happy to help.” Fortunately, Lauren had called me before I had come up with an excuse to call her. She wanted me to help with the staging for events the next two weekends. She had said she was just too devastated by the horror of William’s death to wrap her head around it alone.

It seemed legit to me. I mean, finding out someone you cared about and had intimacies with had spent three years stuffed in a prop you’d been storing in your warehouse was pretty appalling. Or was her upset really guilt that the bodies had been found? Somehow, I couldn’t picture Lauren whacking both William and the mystery woman at a party where his wife was.

It occurred to me for the first time it was odd that Lauren had supplied the backdrop décor for a party at William’s wife’s real estate agency.

This whole case swirled around the women. That was obvious enough. I didn’t think that we were going to discover that the unknown woman whacked William in the head, then committed suicide. Or that a jealous mall Santa wanted William’s gig and took revenge to the next level.

Lauren and I stepped inside the warehouse and she flicked on the fluorescent lights. Yep. Stager’s nirvana. There were rows of racks piled with home décor. One entire section was throw pillows in plastic. Hundreds of pillows.

“The furniture is past all of this,” Lauren said. “I have everything catalogued by style. Midcentury, transitional, farmhouse, etc. Then way in the back are the large-scale props like palm trees, fountains, and a dunking booth. Oh, and a vintage car.”

I just stared in awe. Dressed in winter white jeans and a black sweater with the world’s most adorable black boots, I unbuttoned my heavy red coat and unfurled my scarf from around my neck. Wrapping it around my purse strap I followed Lauren down the first row. She had called me to enlist my help with a hospital event. There wasn’t supposed to be a theme or anything kitschy, just classic Christmas with plenty of artificial trees and swags.

“Would you go down the next aisle and grab about a hundred ornaments?” she asked. “Let’s go straight up gold and red. I need to check on something in the office.”

“Sure.” Lauren actually had two shopping carts at the front by the door so I grabbed one and took off on what felt like a shopping spree. I was all interior designer giddy.

Which was probably why I didn’t hear footsteps behind me.

“What are you doing?” a hoarse gravelly voice asked me.

My hand was deep in a plastic bin filled to the brim with gold balls and I jumped, the ornaments clanging together. I whipped around and saw a man who was actually younger than his voice would lead me to believe. He had pale watery eyes, a scruffy beard, and uncombed hair. He was wearing ancient workman’s overalls. I backed up until I hit the rack. “I’m helping Lauren,” I said, drawing my neck in and my shoulders up, attempting to get my face as far away from his as possible.

“Who is Lauren?” he sneered.

Um. “The owner of this warehouse?” I posed it as a question because suddenly I wasn’t sure what the heck was true and what wasn’t.

“This is my warehouse.” He jerked his thumb toward his chest and repeated himself, this time spit flying out of his mouth and landing on my cheek.

I made a sound that resembled a squeak as I realized I had someone else’s saliva on my skin. On my face. Everything inside me shriveled up and died. He could strangle me right now and it wouldn’t be as horrible as spitting on me.

Okay, maybe that’s a bad example and a slight exaggeration but, people, I do not do germs. No and nope. I felt around for the opening of my purse and started to plunder its depths for my hand sanitizer. “Does Lauren know you’re here?” I demanded, feeling like he was probably an overzealous employee with delusions of grandeur.

“I don’t know this Lauren you speak of.”

At this point I was starting to think maybe he was homeless and he’d found respite from the cold in the warehouse. In which case I couldn’t blame him. He could shift around this place for days and no one would notice him. I realized that the door hadn’t been locked when I had pushed it open.

This was getting a little uncomfortable. Using my scarf, I tried to casually wipe my cheek while shifting to the left to get away from him.

“Lauren?” I called out. I turned and jumped. “Oh, jeez, you’re standing right there.” I found my hand sanitizer and squirted some in my palm, then patted my cheek. “Do you know this man?”

“I’ve never seen him before in my life.”

“Who are you talking to?” the man asked me.

“What do you mean? Lauren.” I gestured to her.

His eyebrows shot up. “You’re nuttier than me, little girl. And I’m pretty nutty.”

“What?” I was so confused. Lauren crossed her arms over her chest and glared at the man.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was Jake.

I’m confused.

That made two of us.

The body in the slide is Lauren Jones. I thought that was the woman who was in charge of the event. Did someone steal her identity? She was reported missing by her husband three years ago.

O-kay. That made exactly zero sense.

“Is your name actually Lauren Jones?” I asked her.

“Of course.”

“Then how are you missing?” I was starting to get a really bad feeling about this.

“Duh. I’m dead, Bailey.”

My jaw dropped. “Shut the front door. How is that even possible? Are you telling me you’re a ghost?”

“There’s a ghost here?” the guy next to me asked. He swung his arms around in all directions wildly. “Begone, demon.”

Yep. There it was. His arms flying through Lauren’s body.

I was gobsmacked. Flabbergasted. I had been bamboozled.

“But… how?” I murmured, putting my hand on my forehead. “The charity event. How?”

“Believe it or not, it wasn’t that hard. I already knew the theme because my partner inherited the entire business. I knew what was being pulled in the warehouse so I told you the theme. Knowing the slide was going up made me feel pretty confident that if I could convince anyone to look into our deaths it was you.”

“So I was never actually hired?” That was just impossible to wrap my head around. Why hadn’t I realized she was a ghost? Because she had confidently pretended to be alive. In hindsight I couldn’t remember a specific moment when she had interacted with anyone other than me.

Other than Jake.

Wait a minute. Jake saw her?

“No, you were never actually hired.”

Dang it. “Which means I’m not getting paid?” Well, that sucked. I was going to Christmas shop with that money. I had spent three hours planning an event that was already planned. “Why didn’t you just tell me? Appear to me like every other ghost? Those were billable hours.” Thank God I hadn’t sent them to Lauren’s design firm. Her partner would think I was a straight up lunatic.

“Lady,” the warehouse man said. “You are freaking me the freak out. I’m going to call the cops.”

I turned to him. “Do you work here or are you squatting?”

“That’s none of your business,” he said with great dignity.

“If you’re squatting you can’t call the cops on me, you know.” That was the last thing I needed was for the cops to think I was breaking and entering. I thought about what Jake’s reaction to that would be. Especially after I had been inside the Anthony’s house.

“Can you see William?” I asked Lauren.

“What?” For the first time she looked as startled as me. “No. Of course not.” Her ghostly face ironically went pale. “Where is William?”

“He was at the party, dressed like Santa.”

“I was right by him and I didn’t know it?”

The warehouse guy started backing up. “If you think you see Santa, I think you should see about some medication.”

I waved my hand to the guy. “Shh. I can’t hear Lauren when you’re talking at the same time.”

“All right. No problem. I’m just going to go to the next aisle. If you’re not gone in five minutes I am calling the cops.”

“Fine. Whatever.” I turned back to Lauren. “Can I ask what you and William were doing when you died?”

“We were… embracing. I didn’t see anything. But I know it was his wife. I’m convinced of it. And nothing has happened in three years and when I saw you at my office dropping off your card and talking to my partner about your services, I followed you and you saw me. I was completely astonished. I wanted you to take me seriously so I just rolled with it.” She rocked on her heels. “Kind of cool of me, wasn’t it?”

“Cool as a cucumber.” I was still astonished. “But I can’t really help you, you know. It’s up to the cops at this point.”

Lauren pursed her lips. “Here’s what we need to do. We need to tell Karen something about that night that only the three of us would know—me, her, William. It will flush her out and she’ll do something stupid.”

“Or something murderous,” I protested. “You’re calling her a murderer!”

“She wouldn’t murder you. She’d get caught!”

“She didn’t for the first double homicide.” That seemed pretty obvious to me.

“Just text her. Please?” Lauren gazed at me in agony. “I can’t do this for eternity. I really can’t. It’s exhausting.”

I got that. Talking about it in a chilly warehouse was exhausting enough. I sighed, channeling Marner. “Fine. What do you want me to say?”

“Tell her that you know she was the last person to see William and me alive.”

“Wow, that’s just throwing it right out there. Seems a little aggressive.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I don’t know.” I was too busy kicking myself for not noticing the minute I got out of the car Lauren was wearing the same cocktail dress she’d had on at the charity event. Presumably what she had been wearing the night of the real estate agency Christmas party, when she had bit it. I’d been so eager to get in the warehouse my skills of observation had failed me entirely.

“Okay, so say this. William calls Lauren Schmoopy.”

“Schmoopy?” My eyebrows shot up. “How do you spell that?”

“Sound it out!” she snapped. “Look, I know that Karen saw us and I know she heard William use that particular term of endearment.”

“Fine. Give me the number.”

Lauren had clearly been waiting for this moment because she rattled the number off with zero hesitation.

I shot a text off and prayed I didn’t now become the subject of harassment from Karen in addition to Lauren and William.

There was no immediate response so I studied Lauren. “I’m going home since I no longer have this job. Or rather, I never did. I will let you know if I hear back from Karen. You’re clearly able to call me so why don’t you give me a ring tomorrow and we’ll touch base?”

I was feeling pretty peeved. If she had just been upfront with me I could have conferred with William and her together and we could have… done something. I wasn’t sure what. But I wouldn’t have wasted my time putting together a party. I guess that was just the bottom line.

Lauren looked like she was going to protest but then she just faded out with a frown.

So now she could vaporize? Where was that days ago?

Shaking my head, I headed home.

When I unlocked my front door and stepped inside I was contemplating how I was going to break it to my boyfriend that he saw ghosts. Jake was really not going to be down with that.

I was so preoccupied with the fear that my boyfriend was going to think I had put some kind of evil eye on him inadvertently, that I didn’t sense anything strange.

Until I opened my coat closet and saw a gun pointed right at my face.

“Oh my God!” I jumped backwards and tried to slam the door back shut. Which would do nothing to stop a bullet, but it was instinct.

A leg stopped the door from closing anyway and as I ducked and scrambled past my console table, searching for a weapon to defend myself with. I had the vague sensation that the human behind the gun was a woman but I didn’t know who it was.

“Freeze!”

Definitely a woman. She sounded shaky, like she wasn’t entirely sure how to control the situation. That alone terrified me enough to stop and turn around, my hands up in the air. “Who are you and what do you want?”

“I’m Karen Anthony.”

Well, crud. This was not good. Damn Lauren for talking me in to texting Karen. Though how she had found my address and hotfooted it to my house in thirty minutes was beyond me. Unless she was dead too. Huh. Now that would be crazy, but way less scary.

If she was, the gun wasn’t real, but a ghost gun.

Without thinking it through, I reached out and smacked the gun. My hand did not go through the weapon it but knocked it to the left. Karen pulled the trigger and I screamed. Yep. Gun was real. The bullet went straight into my Christmas tree shattering ornaments and then my front window.

“Are you crazy?” I shrieked. “You’re going to kill someone!” I was feeling my pockets for my phone.

“That’s the point!” she snapped. “I know you were in my house. I have a surveillance camera by my front and back doors.”

Why was everyone so dang paranoid these days? Karen probably saw me on her iPad or her phone three seconds after I opened the door. It would have been nice if William had warned me. Then again, Karen had clearly opened up her wallet after William died so maybe it was a new addition. In any case, she’d seen me.

Now she was waving a loaded gun in my house.

“Just put the gun down and let’s talk about this.”

Karen did lower the gun slightly but not enough to suit me. At this angle, she would blow out my kneecap instead of my heart but I could still bleed out instead of dying instantly.

“What’s there to talk about? You found the bodies and then you were in my house. That’s not good for me.”

I found my phone in my pocket and used my finger to unlock it. I was optimistic I could do one of three things without having a visual on the screen. Call up Siri to ask her a question. Dial 911. Or record a video. Since the first two required interaction and would make sound that would probably frighten trigger-happy Karen, I opted for three.

I had no clue if I was recording or not but I thought I had tapped the right buttons.

“Sure, let’s talk. First of all, are you the one who came into my house and left me a candy cane?”

She nodded. “I was trying to scare you.”

It had worked. “I guess we’re even then. We both broke into each other’s house. Maybe we can call it all good.”

“I don’t think so. Because you know I killed William and Lauren.”

I shook my head. “I don’t. Did you?”

Karen was wearing black pants that my grandmother would refer to as “slacks” and a burgundy turtleneck sweater. There was a Christmas wreath brooch pinned to the sweater. No coat. Practical winter weather-resistant boots with slip treads, I was sure. She had a trim figure and a short, sassy haircut that showed off her natural gray. She looked like a librarian, not a murderer.

“Of course I did. It’s one thing for William to cheat on me after years of being a stingy husband. But then to find out it’s multiple women and he’s flaunting it in front of me at my own agency party? And bought her a diamond bracelet? I saw red.”

“What were William and Lauren doing?”

Karen huffed. “It was disgusting. Right there in a closet. They were so busy playing Santa and his reindeer they never even heard me. I was surprised that one blow with a hammer did the trick. Well. It knocked them unconscious then I let Stephen finish the job.”

I tried not to react too much but I was equal parts ecstatic that she had confessed and terrified that she had confessed. Because, well, murder. “Who is Stephen?” I inched toward the other side of the room hoping to get closer to the front door.

So much for the neighborhood watch, by the way. A bullet ripped through my picture window and no one noticed? I was going to have to write a strongly worded email.

“Stephen is my boyfriend. At the time we were just friends and colleagues. Both in the hundred-million-dollar club.”

Somehow her work success didn’t seem relevant to what we were discussing right now but I wasn’t going to argue with crazy. “I see.” Not really, but keep her talking as opposed to shooting.

My palms were sweating as I took another baby step, making it beyond the Christmas tree. “I take it that Stephen put the bodies in the slide?”

Karen nodded. “We left them in the closet until after the party then came back. There are cameras but because I was worried about drinking too much I had a room at the hotel the ballroom was in. It wasn’t odd for me to be in the hallway, using the vending machine.”

“Wow, you keep really cool under pressure.” Unlike me, who was sweating like a whore in church.

She shrugged. “You have to in real estate.”

I don’t really think there is much comparison between a bidding war and bumping off your husband, but I kept my mouth shut. If I knew where my vape was, I would suck half the pod down right now. “Props to you for getting away with it.” Maybe if I complimented her she would leave me alone. Think I was on her side. “What woman hasn’t wanted to kill a cheating partner, am I right?” I sounded like a demented comedienne but I was stalling.

I wasn’t sure what time it was but Jake would be over soon. We had dinner plans. Just keep her talking. That was my strategy.

There was a knock on my door.

“Don’t answer it,” Karen said, snarling.

“I won’t.” Because I knew it was Jake and that he would probably text me or call me or just turn the knob.

Which was what he did. The door swung open. Karen turned, gun pivoting with her.

I grabbed the leg lamp and nailed her as hard as I could with it. I don’t work out and I did dislocate my shoulder back in October but adrenaline gave me extra oomph. My aim was slightly off in that I meant to knock the gun out of her hand but I actually mostly missed her with the lamp while the momentum had me crashing into her. We both stumbled and I screamed, “She has a gun!” in case Jake was a blind cop.

The lamp smashed on the floor, while I swatted at Karen’s face as we both hit the Christmas tree. It came down on us with a soft thump, followed by the tinkling of two hundred mercury glass ornaments hitting the hardwood floor.

Fortunately, before I could even get myself out from under an artificial limb, Jake had the gun and Karen secure. Then he lifted the tree off of me while I rolled over onto my back, stunned. Karen was handcuffed to my staircase spindles. She was thrashing around like a toddler having a tantrum over spilled crackers.

“Honey, I’m home,” Jake said as he put his hand out to haul me to my feet.

“Hi. I decided to redecorate,” I said breathlessly, shaking my sweater and coat free of ornament shards.

He swatted my backside to get the rest and shook his head. “You had to break the leg lamp. I feel like you did that on purpose.”

“I was defending myself from Karen, William’s wife.” William who was MIA, I might add.

“Of course you were.” Jake shook his head and pulled out his phone, giving me a soft smile. “There are still two other lamps in this room.”

Because I was relieved he had shown up when he did I smiled back. “I’ll buy you another one. You don’t look shocked to have walked into this situation, by the way.”

“I’m getting used to you being surrounded by trouble.” Then he spoke into the phone, asking for backup. He pulled the phone slightly away and said to me, “Besides, the 911 dispatcher notified me your neighbor thought she heard a gunshot. The car is already on its way but I was only a couple of minutes from here at the time.”

I did hear the police sirens in the distance getting closer.

“Jake, did you know you can see ghosts?” I asked as I realized William and Lauren were both standing in the room behind him.

“Bailey, what? Not now.” He looked annoyed with me.

I pointed behind him, knowing what was going to happen. Just as Jake turned, William gave me a wave and disappeared. Lauren followed suit, which gave Jake time to see her Houdini act.

“What the hell?” Jake rubbed his eyes and swore violently into the phone. Then had to apologize to whoever he was talking to.

The police came in my front door, which was bad timing.

But I figured Jake would need time to process what he had just seen.

I expected the cops to joke about me always causing Jake trouble but they were by the book. I pulled my phone out and played the video, which miraculously I had managed to take, for them.

They confiscated my phone. Which sucked. A lot.

Much later, after Jake had put plywood on my window (which really ruined the Christmas vibe) and I had swept up my broken ornaments and the leg lamp remnants, Jake looked at me.

“I don’t see ghosts.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I don’t.”

“We’ll discuss this later.” I was hungry and I did not want to argue.

“You sound like my mom.”

I dumped shards in the kitchen trash. “And you sound like my grandmother. Stubborn.”

Jake tossed the hammer he’d been using down and came into the kitchen. He fished around my liquor cabinet, which didn’t offer much. In the end, he pulled the vodka out of the freezer and poured a healthy shot, which he tossed back. He slammed the glass down with a grimace. Then rubbed his chest.

“You give me heartburn.”

“It’s a talent, what can I say?” I went over to him and massaged his temples. “Poor Jake.”

But he pulled away. “I’m supposed to take care of you, not the other way around.”

Okay. “And you do, Mr. Man. You take great care of me.”

“Someone shot a bullet through your picture window.”

“It was a sixty-five-year-old real estate agent. No one could have predicted that.” But I did open my kitchen junk drawer and pull out my vape and suck on it. “Virginia Slim?” I asked him, holding it out.

To my total shock he took it and took a drag of nicotine. I snatched it away from him. “You’re not supposed to use it! I can’t corrupt you.”

He laughed and pulled me into his arms. “Bailey, you do a lot of things to me.”