Ungrateful Dead by Naomi Clark

Ungrateful Dead
    In case you ever wondered, the “p” in “PI” stands for “private.” Not “phantom” or “paranormal” or anything else to do with ghosts and that shit. I don’t normally have to explain that to people, but Charlie Mullen had been pawing at me for an hour now, insisting that private investigators really could investigate haunted morgues as easily as cheating wives, and it was starting to make my head ache.
    Charlie was one of those guys you just know got bullied at school. All weedy and twitchy, and probably even worse with women than me. I’d been pretty surprised to find him in Sylvester’s bar tonight at all. It’s the kind of place you only go if you’re broke or pathologically incapable of forming meaningful relationships. I was both, so I pretty much lived there, but as far as I knew, Charlie had plenty of money and worked with dead people, so probably wasn’t interested in meaningful relationships with the living.
    Sylvester’s is dirty, cheap, and nasty, like the clientele. The decor is depressing, the beer is watered down, and the peanuts are so salty you have to keep drinking the beer. The jukebox is always playing Johnny Cash and the light bulb in the mens’ washroom is always flickering. It’s got a certain sleazy charm though, personified by Jenny the barmaid and her orange cleavage. I was trying to admire said cleavage right now, but Charlie wouldn’t shut up and let me concentrate.
    “Seriously, Ethan. Just as a favour to me. One night, that’s all. As a favour.” He tugged at my coat sleeve to get my attention.
    I sighed and shrugged him off. “Charlie, I spent the whole day rooting through a pro-golfer’s garbage looking for used condoms for his paranoid wife. I don’t need this shit, okay? I just want to drink my bad beer and go home and watch some bad TV. I’m not spending the night at the morgue with you. I don’t care how haunted it is.”
    “I’m not asking for anything big,” he said indignantly. “I just want some back-up, some proof so my boss will believe me. All you have to do is take a few pictures...”
    “No.” I downed the rest of my beer and signalled to Jenny for a refill. “Not interested.”
    “I’ll pay whatever your going rate is.”
    I shot him a sideways glance then. He gazed at me through coke-bottle glasses, thin face mournful and eager, like a Basset hound. I’ve got a soft spot for dogs. Especially if they’re going to give me money. “Tell you what,” I said as Jenny plonked a fresh beer in front of me, “how about we go and sit down and talk about this, okay? You can tell me what exactly the problem is and I’ll advise you accordingly. Call it an initial consultation.”
    “Great!”
    “And that’ll cost one hundred and fifty dollars,” I added.
    “Oh ... great.” Charlie’s shoulders slumped, either from relief or disappointment. Hard to tell with the dodgy lights in here. He followed me over to a table in the corner, away from the jukebox and Johnny’s song of woe, and I set about rolling a cigarette while Charlie gave me his own sob story. Nobody paid attention to little things like smoking bans in Sylvester’s. Smoke adds ambiance to a room, right?
    “It started about a month ago. You remember that robbery at Cloth Encounters? The lingerie shop? The girl that died came to me after the autopsy. The police couldn’t find any next of kin, so she was there for over a week before they decided to just have her cremated. But after that, weird stuff started happening. Little things at first, like the lights flickering on and off, even if the bulbs were new. Fluctuations in temperature too – they say that’s a classic sign of haunting, don’t they?” He peered at me over his glasses, demanding a response.
    “Yeah, I guess they do,” I replied vaguely. Sounded to me like the morgue needed a good electrician and a better air-con system, but I’ve never had a paranormal experience in my life so what do I know?