I was the only paranormal investigator in the six-story brick building that had once been branded a skyscraper. The rest were CPAs, lawyers, and other typical office park tenants. I think we even had a dental office. It wasn’t on the sign, but the lobby always smelled like one.

I stepped outside the building with enough time to arrive fifteen minutes late. The sidewalk was wet from the melting piles of snow. Up above, the gray clouds would clear up by the time I was done being scolded for being late.

Parking was a perpetual problem in the city. Despite having had the chance to take a spot in front of my building, I parked a few blocks over because my mechanic gets upset if I leave the car parked in places where people can’t admire his work.

He kept my 1971 Mercedes-Benz 280 SE in immaculate condition. The white sedan had a hood long enough to stretch out on, a round grill that looked like an adorable snout, and a pair of double-barrel headlights. It was the most impressive thing I owned.

I had to walk against the grain of foot traffic to get to the parking spot. No one objected louder than a dirty look. People were just trying to get from point A to point B without getting a migraine from the constant jackhammering or the beeping from commercial vehicles that always seemed to be stuck in reverse. The soundtrack of a city in a continual state of repair.

My client, the affluent Camelot Heiress, lived an hour and a half away from my office in a suburb of New Carissimi called Marcato. The expressway out to her estate was wide open, but the inbound traffic to New Cari was stalled at its familiar standstill. As a lifelong New Carissian, I had no idea what the official names of the area’s expressways were. We all referred to them by the old trolley lines they replaced. Even the local traffic reports ignored the route numbers assigned by the original city planners. The one in the direction of Marcato was known as the two-way.

The light traffic gave me time to put my thoughts together about last night’s phone call from Bernard.

Most people who contact me have been traumatized by their encounter, and most of the time they fear their understanding of reality was dangerously close to falling into an abyss. To them, the world had been ordered and structured. Then, out of nowhere, they find their order in disarray and their structured views unable to support reason. Doesn’t help that no one they know is willing to believe them.

Bernard, on the other hand, wasn’t afraid or traumatized. He was irritated. He didn’t need or want my help. There was a small chance I would uncover that he was behind some sort of hoax or scheme to get the heiress’s estate through a well-timed financial power of attorney. But I have yet to find anyone who had based a criminal endeavor on the premise of Scooby-Doo.

The sky had finally given the sun its chance to beat down the mounds of snow piled on both sides of the road. A rainstorm forecasted in a few days would take care of what the daylight wouldn’t.

I turned onto the Camelot driveway. The stretch of pavement felt more like a private road cut through a pine forest. My first glimpse of the residence had me thinking I must have made a wrong turn, because what I saw looked like an upscale resort. Not a place any reasonable person would call home.

A smiling valet waited in front of twin doors under a covered awning, shivering and rubbing his hands. It may have been sunny enough to melt snow, but it was still cold enough to chill a person. If I had known anyone was being forced to wait outside, I would have arrived early.

His red vest was too thin to provide any warmth. I assumed he was required to wear it since the emblem of the estate was proudly embroidered in gold on the left.

My car typically looked out of place wherever I went, but it looked like it belonged here. I, however, did not blend into the upscale environment, even though I was wearing my best second-hand suit. The one closest to being a good fit on me. The valet greeted me with compliments meant for the car and an eagerness to sit behind the wheel.

I handed him the keys, resisted the urge to ask him if he knew how to drive a manual, and instead warned, “Make sure you treat this one with respect.”

He chuckled and drove off, ignoring my advice.

A well-dressed man stepped out of the mansion’s twin front doors to greet me and was clearly unhappy about it. His stride carried Bernard’s attitude from last night’s call. But if I hadn’t deduced who he was by his gait, I could have guessed because of his nicely tailored suit with the matching embroidered emblem. On closer examination, it denoted his rank as manager of the Camelot Estate.

A few wisps of overdyed hair were parted in a comb-over that made every effort to conceal his baldness but could not possibly pass as a full head of hair.

He skipped the formal greeting and went straight to scolding. “Mr. Krelig, you were to arrive promptly, and things have already started.”

“Nice to meet you in person, Bernard.” I extended my hand, but he did not accept it. “And, call me Viktor. Only the plaintiff’s lawyers call me Mr. Krelig.”

That rattled him a bit. He studied me, wondering about the nature of the lawsuits I had referred to. He was prepared to lecture me about something. My out-of-date attire? Not addressing him as “Mr. Perry”? He pushed his judgments to a place where they would remain unspoken.

He waved me over to him and leaned toward the door as if it would budge me and said, “They’ve already started. I’m afraid you’ll need to join them in progress.” I didn’t know who he meant by “them” or how anyone could start an investigation without the investigator.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I wasn’t expecting anyone else other than Mrs. Camelot, but I refused to let it show.

“How much could I have possibly missed?”

He turned away from me like an offended squirrel and scampered into the house. With nothing better to do, I followed at a leisurely pace.

The foyer reminded me of an old-fashioned hotel lobby, but it lacked a desk for checking in. In the middle was a giant round table with a single vase holding a full bouquet. The color from the flowers popped against the room’s dark-stained wood paneling. Beyond the table was a grand staircase that was big enough for an orchestra. It led up to an exposed second story, and when I looked up, I saw the chandelier was hung from the third story and went all the way down past the second.

Bernard cleared his throat as I was craning my neck and wondering if the chandelier was made of diamonds.

“Your coat,” he commanded in an intentional butchering of common courtesy.

“No thanks, I’m not planning on staying long.”

“But, Mr. Krelig, we have you for at least ten hours.”

“No, your bill will be for a minimum of ten hours. We went over this, Bernard. My work is done when I say it’s done.” I was glad we were having this conversation sooner rather than later. If he refused right now, I could exit quickly and peacefully, knowing he never intended to pay.

“Mrs. Camelot will not appreciate your tone. I suggest, for your sake, you correct it.”

“Just get me to where you’re taking me.”

We walked up the stairs and into a large room without any furniture. The light wooden paneling in this room matched the stain on the hardwood floor. Oil-painted portraits hung from the walls and I could see through the glass-paned doors to the balcony of melting snow.

As Bernard said, things had already started without me. In the middle of the room stood an elderly woman with the poise of someone giving a press conference but lacking a podium. I didn’t think it was a leap to assume this was the Camelot Heiress. She wore a dark dress with a bright pattern of occult symbols. The design was not subtle, but it was tasteful, and since it was worn by the Camelot Heiress, it had to be expensive. Her dress was accented by jewelry of misunderstood religious symbols. The whole outfit was the kind of thing someone wears to convince people they believe in the supernatural without having witnessed anything even remotely paranormal.

Her audience was a group of four people representing the absolute bottom of the barrel of my profession. I recognized only one by sight: Solomon Spiritus. But it was clear the others were of similar quality, given the costumes they were sporting. A muscular man was wearing a sequined vest without an undershirt. Next to him was someone dressed in a very expensive Sherlock Holmes costume complete with a deerstalker hat. He was tall, but I doubted he would still be standing if a light gust of wind entered the room. Next to Sherlock was a woman in tights and a leotard, with a silk scarf styled like peacock feathers around her waist. And last was Solomon wearing that stupid patchwork cape of his.

They needed gimmicks to convince others, where I looked like any other person wearing second-hand dress clothes.

They stood in a semi-circle around the heiress, trying to hold back the lies they were so eager to share.

But seriously, the room had no furniture. I had lukewarm noodles for dinner last night, and my place still had furniture. It was hard to believe she was bankrupt. At least, financially speaking. Morally… was still an open question. As I suppose it is for everyone.

“Where are the chairs?” I whispered to Bernard.

He rolled his eyes and said, “Ballrooms don’t have chairs.”

Mrs. Camelot spoke to the four bottom-feeders, “Well, I want to hear all your assessments.”

Solomon Spiritus, the self-proclaimed medium and self-help guru to the famously deceased, was the first to respond. He put on his act, which involved an awkward amount of humming and waving his cape with his left arm. Each time we thought he had finished, Mrs. Camelot would begin to speak, and he would cut her off by humming and waving again.

Eventually, her patience was pushed too far, and she snapped, “Out with it. What do you say?”

“Mmm… I sense the presence of your late husband…”

Of course he did.

Solomon continued, “And he’s trapped. An elaborate unintentional trap and his ethereal plumes are all contangled. Oh, he needs a tremendous amount of assistance and guidance to escape. I am afraid my presence will be needed here for quite some time before either you or he knows peace.”

To my knowledge, Solomon is the only “classically trained actor” who has been rejected by every community theater troupe in existence.

The heiress kept her reaction to a minimum. She did not appear to hate or love his performance.

She called on each of the three remaining, and they all reinforced the claim that the spirit of her late husband was haunting her. The woman channeled the room’s essence by dancing. She was going for interpretative, but after the first fall it just looked clumsy. All that work, and she arrived at the same conclusion as Solomon. The house was haunted, and Mrs. Camelot needed to hire her in order to move on with her life.

Sparkly Vest gave a short and poorly memorized speech filled with such nuggets of wisdom as “Oh wait, I forgot something, let me start over” and spoke the exact same words with the exception that this time he didn’t remember that he forgot something. He was very proud of himself after he finished, whereas everyone else was glad it was over.

Sherlock didn’t try to outperform his competition, and he spoke at a volume that forced everyone to lean toward him. I had the suspicion that the antics of his competitors had convinced him there was, in fact, a ghost and the thought terrified him.

Out of the four, I hoped one of the last two would come out ahead of the others.

My guess was they’d probably all read up on the records of the late Mr. Camelot and sprinkled in as many details as possible.

Then there was silence, and she stared at me like I owed her something.

“Well? What do you think?” she asked.

I was beginning to see where Bernard got his charming personality from.

I looked around the room and saw nothing unusual except for the people inside it.

“I’m sorry for your loss, but neither your home nor this room is being haunted by the spirit of your late husband. Or, for that matter, anyone else.”

One of the frauds audibly gasped as if I had committed some breach of polite society. I couldn’t tell for sure who it was because my eyes were locked with Mrs. Camelot’s, but I think it might have been the dancer.

Camelot patted her forehead with the tips of her middle and ring fingers. Her eyes closed as she spoke with a shade of frustration. “Why do you say this? What do you have to support your conclusion? Everyone else has provided me something.”

The four looked smug. Convinced they would be hired. And part of me wanted them to be. That way, they’d be out of my way when it came to helping people dealing with real paranormal phenomena. None of them knew the catastrophic damage they could cause in the right setting.

I faked a tinge of embarrassment. “I can’t say in front of everyone.”

“Why?”

“Proprietary secret.” If I did, they would incorporate my firsthand knowledge into their acts, and I didn’t want to lend any credibility to their deceptions. Even if it kept them out of my way.

“Very well. Bernard, show Mr. Krelig to my study and then show everyone else the door.”

The only person in the room who wasn’t confused was Mrs. Camelot. She pushed through us to exit the room.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“To change out of this ridiculous dress.”