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guilty.”
    “It’s not a pleasant feeling, is it?” he countered.
    At the door, I stopped and faced him, but he had traveled to the entrance, and was now only inches from my face. “Suppose we find out that Scott did kill that woman with a sword,” I said. “Would our telling him that make him feel better?”
    Paul frowned. “Now who’s not playing fair?” he asked.
    I walked through the swinging door and into the den, mostly because I didn’t have an answer for that. The house, for a place with ten living people and two ghosts inside, was remarkably quiet. I was emphasizing peace and quiet in the advertising, and privately acknowledging the ghosts only to Rance’s group, which seemed fascinated by the subject. We kept television out of the common areas, which annoyed Melissa, but she had relented when I’d gotten a flat-screen HDTV and mounted it on the wall of her bedroom.
    Single moms aren’t always the bad guys.
    Tomorrow night, as had been agreed to in my contract with Senior Plus Tours, we would hold a “séance,” during which I would relay Paul and Maxie’s responses to questions posed by curious guests gathered for the evening. But tonight had no special event scheduled, so I toured the house to see that all the guests were getting what they wanted out of their stay.
    It was early in the season, and Senior Plus had blocked out a few rooms for the next four weeks, but Rance had been explicit in his instructions that this first group was a “trial tour,” and that negative reviews could jeopardize future bookings. He would personally read every evaluation form filled out by the guests at the end of their stays with me.
    In short, I had to make sure everyone had a rollicking good time. Linda Jane so far had seemed quite pleased with the level of service I offered her charges (and I’d seen her at a distance talking with Dolores Santiago, who’d arrived only a half hour later than she’d predicted), though I was fairly certain she’d most likely hear from Bernice Antwerp, the perpetually grumpy woman from the group. Most of the other guests were lovely (although Mr. and Mrs. Jones rarely—if ever—left their bedroom), but Bernice could find fault in world peace if she put her mind to it.
    Tonight, I found her in the library, walking from shelf to shelf (we had over two thousand books stacked), shaking her head. “Anything I can help you with, Mrs. Antwerp?” I asked, careful not to call her by her first name, a breach of propriety that had earned me a scolding her first day here. “Having trouble choosing a book?”
    “There aren’t any good books here,” she griped, shaking her head and snarling a bit. “I can’t imagine who chose all these books; they’re awful.” I hadn’t actually chosen the books myself; I’d bought most of them in bulk from collections and estate sales, but still, she couldn’t find one thing to read among two thousand books?
    I was determined, though, to break through. “Well, if you let me know what kind of books you enjoy reading, I can certainly see to it that they’re stocked here,” I said.
    “Good books,” Bernice reiterated. Of course; why hadn’t I thought of that?
    “I’ll do what I can,” I assured her. She made a hmmph sound as I left the library.
    Newly determined by my encounter with the unpleasable Bernice, I checked out the game room, which in reality had only a pool table in it. Two older gentlemen, Warren Balachik and Jim Bridges, were drinking beer and playing pool. They looked up when I appeared in the doorway.
    “Alison!” Jim grinned. He was a friendly, gregarious man who had seemed tickled by everything that had gone on since he’d arrived. “Checking up on us?”
    “I just wanted to see who was winning,” I told him. “Thought I might take on the winner myself.”
    “Do you play?” Warren, a smaller, slighter man with a permanent bend in his neck (which was actually something of an advantage at pool) asked.
    “No. So