Ghosts Beneath Us: A Third Spookie Town Murder Mystery (Spookie Town Murder Mysteries Book 3) (7 page)

After supper Laura entered the kitchen where, on the table, Abigail was finishing up the last of the sketches and settled in a chair beside her. Nick was in the living room watching one of his favorite shows,
Supernatural
. Snowball was curled up in his cat bed by the stove, sleeping.

“Abby, my sister Charlene called me earlier and she wants to know if Nick and I can spend the weekend with her at our cousin Sheila’s? We’re having a family reunion. All my brothers and sisters will be there. I told her, of course, it was okay? Is it? Can you drive Nick and me to Sheila’s house on Friday after school? It’s been weeks since we’ve seen the other kids. I miss them. Even Giles is going to be there. He’s on leave until next week and has been visiting everyone a couple days each. He’ll be at Sheila’s by Friday and if we go there he can spend more time with all of us.”

The year before Laura and her other siblings had become orphans but none of their other relatives had had room for all six children together, so they had been split up between cousins and aging aunts and uncles across the state. Giles, the oldest, was in the army.

Abigail had taken in Laura and Nick because there’d been an instant and undeniable bond between the three from the first morning Abigail had met them at the library while she’d been painting a mural. She’d felt bad the children had had to be split up, but these days they all seemed to be flourishing. Whenever she could, though, she made sure the sisters and brothers saw each other, even if it meant driving across the state for them to do it. At least Sheila’s house, at a hundred and fifty miles, wasn’t that far away. She could drive there and back easily in three or four hours and often did. She’d do anything for Laura and Nick and their siblings. They were such sweet kids.

Abigail peered up from her drawing. “Of course it’s okay. Whenever you or Nick want to see your brothers and sisters, anywhere, anytime, I’ll take you. You know that. Friday, huh? And then I’ll pick you up on Sunday evening?”

“Yes.” Now Laura was smiling. She was nearly unrecognizable from the rail thin, bereft urchin that Abigail had originally taken in as a foster child, along with her brother, after their father had been murdered by the Mud People Killer and her mother had died from illness. She was now a pretty and happy thriving sixteen year old who smiled easily. Her artwork had continued to improve and if she kept making high grades, in two years she would be up for a full scholarship to any art college she’d want to attend. Abigail was proud of her and Nick.

“I can’t wait to see Giles. It’s been almost a year since he had leave.”

“So it’ll be quite the celebration. I bet you’re thrilled?” Abigail put her pencil down and looked at the girl. Giles, almost twenty, had been in Afghanistan the last eight months and everyone had been worried sick over his safety. Laura and Nick had spent a lot of time emailing him to keep him updated on things and packing off care packages for him. He’d made it back in one piece and everyone was relieved.

“You know Sheila’s invited you to stay, too, if you’d like?”

“Oh, sure…where would she put me? Outside in the front yard on a cot? If everyone’s coming there won’t be room for me. Thank you but no thank you.” Sheila’s house was tiny. It was more like an overgrown garage.

“Besides,” she tapped her fingers on the drawing beneath her hand, “I have this new commission, a full decorating job, and major construction begins on it tomorrow. Kate, my new boss, really wants me to be there. There’s so much we have to decide even before my real work begins. She needs my help so I need to be here.”

“That’s okay.” Laura stood up. “You can stay and visit for a while on Friday with us, though, can’t you? A few hours? You can have supper with us?”

“Of course I can. It’ll be great to see your brother and sisters again.” Abigail had by then thought of asking Frank to drive up there with her and the kids. It’d be a nice get away and after they dropped them off they’d have rare alone time. In fact, they’d have the whole weekend alone and she was already planning for that. She and Frank might even go out on a real date Saturday night.

“Fantastic!” Laura gave her a quick hug before she joined Nick in the other room. She enjoyed
Supernatural
, too.

Abigail brewed a cup of tea and returned to her sketches. She wanted to present them to Kate the next day. Amazingly she’d come up with floor plans without even trying. Just being there that morning with Kate had given her the ideas.

*****

After the kids had gone to bed there was a knock on the door. It was Frank. He often dropped by once the children were tucked in.

He gathered her into his arms and kissed her.

“And to what do I owe this visit?” she asked when she was set free.

“Do I need a reason?” he said that every time. It was a sort of running joke between them.

“Not really.” They smiled at each other.

“I have some news for you and, heck, I wanted to see you. It’s been days.”

“I know. And perfect timing, too,” she said. “Come on in. I just put my work away and the kids are in bed. I have a new job and I’ve been dying to tell you about it. Now I can. Among other things.”

“And,” Frank added, trailing her into the living room. “I also thought since it’s a gorgeous spring night you might want to sit out on the porch swing, stare up at the night sky, the stars and the moon, and talk about…wraiths and apparitions.”

“Wraiths and apparitions?” Then she made the intended connection. “You’ve heard something more from Beatrice, haven’t you?”

“I sure have. She telephoned me this afternoon. I just left there. She claims she saw her husband’s ghost again. Oh, and someone or something trashed her basement again.”

“It was already trashed.” Abigail had gone to the closet and grabbed a jacket. It was chilly outside.

Frank didn’t answer until they were on the porch sitting on the swing. “She hired two neighborhood boys she knew to straighten it up after we left. Last night someone or something snuck in and undid it all. I saw the end results. It’s worse than the first time. Not only did someone destroy the basement, they broke some of the house’s windows and tried to burn down her garage. They didn’t succeed, though. Fire trucks got there in time and put the fire out.

“I called Luke from the hardware store and he and his part-time helper, Jeff, are fixing the windows for the second time in three days. Beatrice is a wreck. She’s scared to death.” He took her hand and the swing gently moved back and forth. The sky was alight with stars and the world was full of the perfume of flowers. There was no wind at all.

“More vandalism? That’s disturbing all right. Who would do this to her? She’s just an old lady. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“You’re telling me. I’ve been trying to fill in the blanks now for days. I can’t. Yet. But there is
something
going on. I feel it. I do believe her son should be contacted. He needs to be aware of what’s happening to his mother. They have been estranged for years and it hurts her. I did have an early suspicion that in some way she might be doing this to get his attention. Until today. Now I don’t think so. There’s too much damage. She couldn’t have done it herself.”

“I agree. I don’t believe it, either. Something else is going on here.”

“Well anyway, I’m about ready to call her son up and scold him for neglecting his mother. Tell him to get his butt down here and visit her. She’s old. Lonely. She needs her son.” He shook his head in disgust. “If my son ever treated me like that, I’d be all over him.”

“That’s you. But I can’t imagine you and Kyle not being close.”

“Oh, we’ve had our disagreements over the years, but the older he gets the more he seems to appreciate me. What can I say? I raised a good kid.”

“Lucky you. I’ve known so many children who leave their parents behind. They go off to find their own lives far away and never look back. It’s so sad.

“So…you said Beatrice saw her husband’s ghost again?” There was a faint meow. Snowball was sitting inside framed in the window. Getting up from the swing she let the cat out. The animal bounded into the yard and careened around the side of the house. Abigail reclaimed her spot beside Frank.

“So she swears.” Frank picked up where they’d left off.

“Did he say anything to her?”

Frank flashed her an odd look. “You know I asked her that same question but she couldn’t give me a decent answer. All she said was he was really upset about something but she couldn’t understand what it was.”

“I guess she doesn’t speak ghost.”

“They have their own language, huh?” Frank put his arm around her and drew her closer. “Okay. You mentioned you had something else to tell me?”

“Oh, you’re going to love this. Myrtle informed me today at Stella’s that now we have another mysterious haunting of an old person.”

“Who?”

“Someone called Alfred–”

 “Loring. I know him. I see him around town all the time. He’s a kooky old bird, and a veteran, real patriotic, but in my opinion these days missing a few brain cells. What happened?”

“According to Myrtle it sounds a lot like what Beatrice is experiencing. He’s hearing suspicious noises in the night. Pounding on the walls. Someone tromping around his house when no one’s really there. Unseen intruders. Small vandalisms.”

“He seeing ghosts, too?”

“You know Myrtle did say something about ghosts, but not if Alfred had seen any.

“She’s going on a cruise, you know.”

“Really. That woman sure does like to travel.”

“And gamble.”

“That, too,” Frank said. “And you know she wins more times than not.”

“She does seem to have the magic touch when it comes to making money.”

“That she does.”

They sat there in a comfortable silence for a while, gazing up at the sky. An owl hooted somewhere in the trees above and the sound of wings could be heard.

“Something just occurred to me, Abby.”

“Uh, huh?” Abigail was content sitting with him listening to the night, though the old peoples’ troubles were bothering her. She still had that uneasy feeling she got when trouble was heading her way, their way, big trouble, and it had grown.

“If I remember correctly, Alfred lives not far from Beatrice.”

“Myrtle gave me his address. He lives on Doris.”

“Oh my,” Frank mumbled softly. “That’s a side road off of Beatrice’s street. They’re practically next door neighbors.”

“And you think that coincidence means something?”

“My cop sense says so, because in my world there are no coincidences.”

“Myrtle told Alfred we’d take care of everything. He’s expecting to see us. Soon.”

“I’m already ahead of you, Abby. What are you doing tomorrow morning?”

She squeezed his hand. “I’m going to visit old Alfred with you. See what he has to say.”

“Ten o’clock fine with you?”

“How about nine? I need to be somewhere tomorrow morning and don’t want to be too late. We can swing by and see Beatrice as well. I have a couple of questions for her myself.”

He groaned. “So early?”

“That’s not early for you, Frank Lester. Aren’t you the writer who gets up at the crack of dawn to work on his novels?”

“I am. Oh, all right, nine it is. Now where do you have to be tomorrow morning and what was the other news you had for me?”

Tucked up close to him, she told him about her new commission and the bakery and, as she knew he would be, he was happy for her. It wasn’t until after she’d said goodnight to him she remembered she’d forgotten to ask him about going with her when she took the kids to Shelia’s on Friday. No problem. She’d ask him when she saw him in the morning.

After he was gone, she finished up the sketches she’d promised Kate. Even in her critical opinion they’d turned out good. Then an hour later she switched off the lights and went up to bed. She’d come up with three suitable layout designs for the bakery and couldn’t wait to show them to her.

Yet in the recesses of her mind, the ghost mystery, as she’d begun calling it, churned and gnawed at her thoughts and the uneasy feelings grew.

Was Beatrice’s dead husband really haunting her? Ridiculous. It had to be someone playing mean tricks on her. But why? Now with Alfred Loring also being on the hit list, the answer might mean so much more. All she knew was that something wasn’t right.

Attacking, destructive ghosts. Yeah, sure.

Chapter 3

Abigail

Alfred Loring’s house, if one could call it that, was, as Myrtle has so whimsically tagged it, little more than a shack. It didn’t belong in the same neighborhood as Beatrice’s wilted mansion, but it was. It was hidden in a thicket of trees further away from the road. Small, dilapidated and surrounded by castoff items like wash machines, rusted cars, broken furniture and trash, it was an eyesore.

“I hate to say this,” Abigail whispered to Frank as they waited for someone to answer the door, “but I’ve never seen a house like this. It’s so modest. And what’s around it reminds me of a –”

“Junkyard?”

“Or rubbish dump.” Her gaze slid in his direction as she held her nose. He was grinning. “How does anyone live like this?”

“Alfred is a weird old duck. He’s a collector of sorts. Very resourceful though. He served in the Viet Nam war and was awarded a Purple Heart or two. He came from a family of carpenters and built this place himself in the nineteen seventies after his parents died and left him this piece of land. It’s a sizeable amount of acreage, too.” Frank rapped at the door again and someone inside could be heard yelling at them to keep their clothes on, he was coming.

“That explains it then.”

“Explains what?”

“His house in this neighborhood. Weren’t there any housing codes in the nineteen seventies?”

“Not in Spookie evidently. But the house has been here for as long as I can remember and no one’s going to tell Alfred to update it. If he could even afford to do it. He lives on a pension and veteran’s disability. But, beyond all that, there have been rumors he’s sick; that he’s dying. So no one’s going to bother him about the decrepit state of his homestead.”