7b2696c981e3d60fa8abbc841c83ccf4

“Look!” said Kingman suddenly, his eyes wide and fearful. “Listen!” he added, his ears moving about like satellite dishes.

I looked and I listened, but apart from plenty of noise from the street in the form of foot traffic and motorized vehicles and such, I couldn’t see or hear what all the fuss was about. “What am I looking and listening for, Kingman?” I asked finally.

“It’s the ghost—he’s trying to tell me something!”

“What is he trying to tell you?”

“I’m not sure. It’s too faint. Oh, darn that street noise.”

I’d never really paid a lot of attention to the noise from the street before. I mean, it’s just noise, you know—it’s in the background and you more or less ignore it. But now I did pay attention and Kingman was right: all those cars passing by, and the motorcycles and the people talking, it was pretty loud, if you thought about it.

“Maybe we should go inside,” Dooley suggested. “That way we can hear the ghost.”

“Good idea, Dooley,” said Kingman, and abruptly turned on his heel and strode into the shop, where his human Wilbur was eagerly ogling a female and telling her he was single—information that clearly didn’t impress her in the least.

We moved deeper into the store, but since the sound of the customers and the humming of the fridges and freezers clearly impeded Kingman’s open line of communication with his ghost, we moved through the plastic door strips designed to keep out flies, and into the private part of the building, where Kingman and Wilbur live like perfect bachelors.

And much to my surprise it was pretty clean back there—though that probably had more to do with the fact that Wilbur pays for the assistance of a cleaner twice a week.

We moved up the stairs and now found ourselves in Wilbur’s living room, dominated by an exceedingly large flatscreen television, and one of those barcaloungers that are all the rage with the discerning bachelor and sportsfan. Next to it, a second sofa had been placed, and this is where Kingman likes to spend the evening, watching television alongside his human.

He now hopped up onto his favorite spot and said,“Be quiet, fellas. Let’s see if the ghost is ready to communicate. Usually he only comes out at night, but I could have sworn I heard it rattling its chain this morning, too.”

“Rattling its chain?” I asked, not bothering to hide my incredulity.

“Ghosts like to rattle chains, Max,” Dooley assured me.

“But why?”

He shrugged. Clearly the Discovery Channel hadn’t discovered that yet.

And so we were both quiet, even though I would have preferred to discuss the recent case with our friend. But since you have to adhere to the rules of the house when assuming the role of visitor, we did as we were told, and patiently waited on the carpet until the ghost made itself heard or seen.

We probably could have waited forever, for as far as I could tell, no ghost—polter or otherwise—was in evidence.

“I don’t think he’ll show up,” said Kingman after a while, then glanced down at us with a sort of reproachful expression on his face. “And it’s probably all your fault—he doesn’t want to show his face when you guys are here.”

“Look, Kingman, we all know that ghosts don’t exist, so maybe—”

“Shhhh!” he suddenly said, and assumed a sort of ninja position, one paw stretched out in front of him, the other up in the air. “Did you hear that?”

I hadn’t heard a thing, so I shook my head.

“I think I heard it,” said Dooley. “A sort of humming or moaning.”

“Probably the fridge,” I said, earning myself another reproachful look from Kingman.

“I think it must be the ghost of the person who lived here,” said Kingman after a while, when the humming or moaning didn’t persist.

“Who lived here?” I asked. I may not believe in ghosts, but I am always interested in idle gossip about both the living and the dead.

“Some old dame,” he said. “She ran the store until Wilbur took over, and then retired to a nursing home.”

“She sold Wilbur the store?”

“Lock, stock and barrel. Said she was too old and wanted to retire, and since Wilbur was one of those jack of all trades, master of none kind of guys, it was his big break and proved to be the making of him.”

“But if she retired to a nursing home, why would she be haunting the place?” I asked the logical question.

Kingman shrugs.“Who knows? Ghosts are weird.”

“Ghosts are weird,” Dooley confirmed, as if he was the big expert on all things ghostly.

“I think it’s pretty obvious she’s trying to tell me something. Something to do with the store, maybe, or Wilbur. Wait!” he cried, making me jump where I sat.

I waited patiently, or not so patiently, but when nothing happened, I said,“What do you think she wants to tell you, Kingman?”

“Who knows?”

“Oh, I know,” said Dooley. “Maybe she buried a treasure in the basement, and now she wants you to find it and share it with Wilbur.”

Kingman’s eyes showed a keen interest. “Treasure? In the basement?”

“Do you even have a basement?” I asked, still assuming the role of the skeptical one.