Chasing Ghosts (5 page)

“
What are you smiling at?” Sara asked,
her smile radiating from the passenger seat.

“
Just wondering how many more gray
hairs we gave Padre.” He parked the Navigator at the curb and they
slammed out of the vehicle.

The Hideaway smelled of beer and sweat. If
the wood floor ever got a washing it would probably disintegrate.
Toby Keith’s voice oozed from the juke box talking about loving
this bar. Two men swaying at the end of the chipped and bruised bar
were bellowing along with Toby. Men playing pool stopped to leer at
Sara, their cue sticks hovering over the pool table.

“
Well, well. Slumming, Dagger?” Casey
stood behind the bar looking more like a bouncer gone to seed. What
might have once been a muscular forty-eight-inch chest had given
way to beer and gravity and hung over his belt like yeast-raised
bread.

“
Your place a slum? Why, it’s listed at
the Visitors’ Bureau as one of the top ten places to see in Cedar
Point.”

“
Ha ha.” Casey turned his attention to
Sara. There were enough gaps in his teeth to release a whistle
every time he breathed. He made a futile attempt at pulling down
his Chicago Cubs tee shirt but it didn’t help to hide his gut.
Tattoos resembling barbed wire circled each of his flabby
biceps.

“
Who’s this? Thought you were engaged
to the blonde bitch.”

“
That ended a long time ago. This is
Sara Morningsky. She’s my business partner.”

Casey laughed. “That what they call them
these days?”

“
Excuse me?” Sara’s right eyebrow
jutted sharply. Faster than the bar owner could blink, Sara reached
into her purse and pulled out a Kel-Tec P32. “Want to clarify
that?”

Casey’s eyes appeared crossed as they focused
on the weapon. He slowly raised his hands. The men in the bar
stopped crooning. Even Toby Keith got the hint as his song
ended.

“
Sorry. No harm intended. Just having a
little fun is all.” Casey looked to Dagger. “Can I lower my hands
now?”

“
Play nice, Sara,” Dagger
said.

Sara slipped the gun back into her purse.

“
Need to ask you a few questions.”
Dagger moved to the end of the bar, out of ear shot of the other
patrons. Sara and Casey followed. “Anyone come in here recently
asking about me?”

The big man’s eyes grew and a small teletype
appeared to play back in his head. It looked as though he were
weighing his options – lie and save his skin or tell the truth and
walk away with just a few broken bones. Seeing that Sara had
slipped her hand back into her purse, he opted for truth.

“
Yeah, couple days ago. Looked like an
insurance salesman, but a dangerous insurance salesman. Something
about his eyes. You just happened to be picking up your cleaning
down the street. I pointed out your car,” he said, looking
nervously at Sara’s purse, “and told him he could probably catch
you there if he hurried. Did he?”

Dagger shook his head. Demko probably
followed him home and decided on a surprise visit rather than
approaching him in public. Which means he probably was using
Connors’ rental car before disposing of the car with Connors’
decomposing body in the trunk.

Dagger smiled at the nervous giant. “Guess
you can live another day.” He led Sara out of the bar whispering,
“That thing loaded?”

Sara winced. “Forgot.”

CHAPTER 6

The gun metal gray binoculars were a
Christmas gift from his wife. Padre had complained that the damn
things cost $600 and a $25 pair would have done just as well. But
he was wrong. These were so powerful he could see an ant crawling
up a tree trunk two hundred yards away. Before it got too dark he
needed to search out the quarry Dagger had mentioned. Sure it was
far-fetched and Dagger could be pulling his leg. But with all the
weird cases he had seen Dagger work, there was just something in
the amusement Dagger had shown when telling the story that told
Padre if Dagger were involved, expect the unexpected.

The closed quarry dominated the southeast
side of town. Padre had been crouched in the weeds searching the
area to make sure he was alone. The gravel roads into the property
were grown over. So far he hadn’t seen any bird watchers or bikers
or teens engaged in nefarious activities.

He moved closer to the fence, then trained
the binoculars on the floor of the quarry. Small pebbles appeared
as huge boulders through the lens. Small bones sprang in front of
the lens of the binoculars. Padre figured they were the remains of
rabbits and other small animals who had inadvertently fallen into
the quarry. A crow cawed from a branch overhead, sending a chill
down Padre’s spine. He didn’t care too much for being out in the
woods even in daylight. Ever since the bizarre Friday the
Thirteenth case he worked with Dagger he hadn’t been able to go
into the forest at night without an entire arsenal on him. Back
then, even an arsenal hadn’t helped.

The sun slowly crept across the sky. Padre
returned his attention to the floor of the quarry. If Dagger’s
humor contained one ounce of truth, a body tossed into the quarry
would be close to the edge. He swept the floor below him, seeing
more small bones, bird wings, a few beer cans. Padre had grown up
several miles from the quarry and as a kid remembered his mother
yelling every time they dynamite-blasted the rock. All of her
knickknacks would fall off the glass shelves.

The lens skimmed the area across from where
he sat. Still nothing that looked like a body. There were tires,
charred remains of what looked like a car, scrap metal of some
type, more bones, shoes…wait. Padre zipped the binoculars back to
the bones. He lowered the binoculars to view the area with the
naked eye, then back to the binoculars. The bones were fragments
but looked larger than rodent bones. Slowly he returned to the
shoes, adjusted the focus. The shoes still had socks in them…and
feet.

“
Tell me again what I’m doing here at
eight o’clock at night with my gear and my motorcycle.” Luther
Jamison pulled the helmet from his head. His close-cropped Afro fit
his small frame. There was barely any gray in his hair or lines on
his face yet he was pushing sixty.

Padre worked the lock picks in the rusted
padlock. He could just as easily have cut the chain but that might
encourage others to travel the gravel road down to the floor of the
pit. Padre pointed with his chin to the binoculars. “Check it out.
Just about two o’clock on the floor of the quarry.”

Luther peered through the binoculars and
swept down to the approximate area. Puzzled, he adjusted them
again, glared at the target, then lowered the binoculars. “This
what I think it is?”

“
Yep. Shoes and lots of bone fragments.
We need to gather what we can and get them back to your
lab.”

The lock pick finally did its magic. Padre
jerked the stubborn lock open and threaded the chain off the gate.
“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”

“
Huh. That means Chase Dagger is
involved.” Luther climbed on his bike and nodded for Padre to do
likewise. He fired up the engine and tore down the gravel
road.

Padre hung on for dear life as the tires
slipped and jerked on the gravel. He made a sign of the cross when
they finally hit bottom. “Sweet Mary and Joseph. You trying to kill
me?”

Luther just smiled, pulled his kit from the
back of the bike and moved closer to the battered shoes. He grabbed
his recorder, then stopped. “This official?”

“
Not yet.”

Luther turned off the recorder and picked up
his camera. “I need these for posterity. Cases you dump in my lap
always make for great plots in the mystery series I’m planning to
write about a highly intelligent medical examiner.”

“
Yeah, you and me both.”

Padre waited as Luther snapped pictures and
snorted, shook his head, sighed. He walked in a wide circle. There
were pieces of bone, clothing, and dried blood spread over a
four-hundred- square-foot area. It hadn’t rained in days so Padre
was sure the rust colored walls were from the victim’s blood which
told Padre this guy did explode on his way down. He pressed
fingertips to his temples and mumbled, “Dagger, I’m going to kill
you.” A small voice he called his skeptical angel said, “Wait for
proof. This may have nothing to do with Dagger.”

Once he was done snapping pictures, Luther
started to collect the fragments from the outer edges and work his
way in. “Hope we have enough daylight left.”

“
Let me give you a hand so we can move
this along.” Padre snapped on latex gloves.

“
I remember back in 1994 they
discovered a meteorite in this place.” Luther lifted one of the
shoes and sniffed. “It weighed about a thousand pounds and thought
to be over four billion years old.” He set the shoe in a paper bag
saying, “Been dead no more than a day.” He sniffed
again.

Padre felt his dinner rise as he looked at
the bone and muscles jutting from the shoe. The top of the sock had
been burned away.

“
Anyway, they believe the meteorite hit
the Earth about four hundred million years ago and landed in the
quarry when it was a coral reef. And this is actually three
quarries connected by tunnels. In its heyday it produced seven
million tons of rock products annually.”

“
Thanks for the lesson. Maybe it will
come in handy if I’m ever on
Jeopardy
.”

Luther picked up pieces of cloth and dropped
them in the bag. “Fabric is singed. This guy went up like a torch
but the skin isn’t black. What the hell?” He studied the
surrounding area. “Where’s the head?”

Padre shrugged and pointed. “There…there…and
there.”

The man opened the door and listened. The
conference call had started so the representatives from area
parishes should be busy for a while. He closed the door then sat at
the conference table, the laptop fired up and ready to go. After
inserting the flash drive, he waited for the prompts, clicked on
EXPLORE and opened DRIVE E. It didn’t take long for the detailed
list of documents to appear. He opened the first document. Puzzled,
he opened several more. Curse words that would have made a
longshoreman blush flew from his mouth. Everything was
encrypted.

CHAPTER 7

“
PLEASE MISTER POSTMAN.AWWWKK.”
Einstein spread his scarlet and royal blue wings as he tap danced
on the perch.

“
Mornin’, Einstein.” Simon reached out
a hand to Einstein but drew it back right as Einstein snapped at
him. Simon roared with laughter.

Dagger lowered the paper and glared at the
macaw. “Behave yourself, Einstein. He’s one of the friendly guests.
We need to keep him around.”

Einstein mimicked Simon’s laugh which made
Simon laugh even harder. The macaw flew up to the catwalk that
dissected the living room. Stairs along one wall led up to Sara’s
bedroom. The catwalk branched out from her door and led to a wall
of windows with a picturesque view of their property.

Simon hobbled to the front door and admired
the scenery. Sara was watering the flower baskets hanging on the
porch. Every time she raised the hose, she exposed more of her tan
midrift.

“
Um ummmm. Such a lovely thing. One of
these days, that young Tyler is going to snatch her right out from
under your nose.”

Sara had met Nick Tyler during one of her
early cases with Dagger. The Tyler family was one of the richest in
the Midwest. Women followed Nick around slipping him their phone
numbers. He had Hollywood good looks, was currently modeling in
Europe, had gone to college in Europe, and had been so taken with
Sara that when back in the states, the two were inseparable.

“
He’s gay.”

“
Yeah. You wish.”

Dagger shrugged. “He’s a model, spends a lot
of time in Europe where daddy won’t catch wind of his, uh, male
friends, and the only reason he squires Sara around is to try to
prove to the world that he’s all man.”

“
Squire?” Simon hefted his body onto
the loveseat. “No one squires anymore. They hook up. Besides, don’t
you think those foreign paparazzi would have a field day plastering
his face on their front pages? Everyone knows his every move.
Except you.” Simon pointed a beefy finger at him. “Like I said. One
day you are going to wake up and she’s going to be picking out
wedding gowns.”

Dagger folded the paper and tossed it aside.
“What have you got for me?”

“
Common sense.”
“Businesswise.”

Einstein swooped back to the perch by
Dagger’s desk. He bobbed his head as though watching Sara through
the window, then belted out a loud screech that had Simon covering
his ears. Simon gave up and hobbled out to the kitchen.

Dagger grabbed a Brazil nut from the top
drawer of his desk. “Want to go outside, Einstein?” The macaw
bobbed his head up and down. “This way.” He led Einstein back to
the aviary and through the far door to the screened enclosure. Once
the macaw was settled, Dagger gave him the Brazil nut.

Simon was cutting himself a piece of coffee
cake when Dagger walked in. “Can’t talk on an empty stomach,” Simon
said.

“
Oh, hell. You are more trouble
than…”

“
Hey, no way to talk to a guy who
cleans up your messes.” Simon slapped the cake on a plate and
hobbled over to the kitchen table. Sunlight streamed in through the
windows, reflecting off of the chrome and granite counters and
fixtures. “Speaking of messes, you figure out how that guy ended up
with a bomb in his neck?”