Ghouls Just Want to Have Fun (13 page)

What was it with guys these days? First Drew Van Vleet with the insults and insinuations; now Townsend and his moronic move-Gram-in joke. Men.

I whipped into a parking place on the square and turned off the car, pocketed my cell phone and key, and headed for the heavy glass doors on the south side of the courthouse. I pushed the intercom button to the right of the door.

"Sheriff's Department. May I help you?"

I sighed, appreciating the crystal-clear quality of this communication device. The drive-up at the Dairee Freeze sounded like Darth Vader on lead vocal, with Snap, Crackle and Pop providing backup. "Tressa Turner from the
Gazette
. I need to pick up the county trip information and nine-one-one calls," I told the metallic box.

I waited for a few seconds while they apparently decided if they really wanted to buzz me in. Understandable. For a while there my visits to the courthouse corresponded to a rising body count. I was finally buzzed in. I opened the door, walked up a short flight of steps and made a left down the hall to the communications center of the sheriff's office. The right-hand hallway led to the operations offices that housed the sheriff and his chief deputy. The jail was located in the basement of the ancient courthouse. It had always kind of creeped me out as a child to see those barred windows from the courthouse lawn--like some criminal could be standing there looking up my dress. Well, if I'd ever worn a dress, I might have thought that. Still, the idea that inmates could watch us without our being aware of it was disturbing.

There's currently a move on to build a new jail facility, but opponents are hesitant to support something for prisoners that is more modern than they themselves can afford to live in. I think they've heard too many stories about cable TV in jail cells. At least I hope they're stories. Heck, I can't even afford cable TV.

I walked down the hallway and was buzzed through a second door where dispatch was located.

"Hey, Toni," I greeted the three-to-eleven dispatcher, who also worked a second job at the deli of a local grocery store. I know most food outlet employees on a first-name basis. "How goes it?"

Toni looked up at me from her big comfy chair in front of a panel of knobs and buttons that looked like something out of
Star Trek
. Her short black hair curled down over the collar of her white top.

"Can't complain," she said. "No one would listen. And you?"

"Same ol', same ol'," I replied.

"That bad, huh?"

I shrugged. "Depends on when you ask me. You got the printouts for the
Gazette?
" I asked. "I meant to pick them up earlier, but something came up."

Toni got up, walked over to the counter and collected the paperwork from a wire basket.

"Here," she said.

"Thanks," I replied as the phone rang.

Toni hurried back to her seat and answered the call.

"Nine-one-one. Sheriff's Department. What is your emergency?"

I decided to stick around, mainly because I inherited the nosy gene from my grandma.

"And he's still there? Is he intoxicated? Are there any weapons?"

I listened, intrigued by this front-row seat for criminal activity unfolding around me.

"Yes, ma'am. I'll send a car out right away. Sixty-six-eight, County." Toni spoke into the headset microphone she had on.

"Sixty-six. Go ahead, County."

"Sixty-six, we have a report of a ten-fourteen, possible ten-sixteen, eight-oh-seven 115th Avenue. That's the old Holloway house on Dead End Lane, Sixty-six."

My radar went up quicker than the Grandville PD's handheld radar unit when the high school drivers left each day. A call from Haunted Holloway Hall? I racked my brain with no luck trying to remember ten-codes from TBS reruns.

"Ten-four, County. Ten-seventy-six."

"Ten-four, Sixty-six. Ten-seventeen is Vanessa McCormick."

Egads! Enough with the ten-this and ten-that.

"Ten-fourteen is described as an older gentleman, Sixty-six. Brown tweed jacket, blue jeans. Possible ten-ninety-six."

Brown tweed? I'd joked with Joe Townsend not more than three hours earlier about the mothball scent that clung to the jacket like stagnant cologne. What the heck was Joltin' Joe up to now?

"Ten-four, County. Ten-seventy-seven ten minutes."

It didn't take a genius to figure out that part. I had ten minutes. Ten minutes to get to Haunted Holloway Hall and get Joe Townsend the heck out of there before all hell broke loose.

I grabbed the printouts and headed for the door, hitting the sidewalk outside the courthouse at a dead run. I hoofed it to my Plymouth and jumped in and prayed Whitey wouldn't fail me now. Two small, inconsequential, almost not even bad swear words and three backfires later I was headed west out of town en route to Haunted Holloway Hall.

I floored the Plymouth's accelerator, figuring it was safe enough, as the closest county mountie was ten minutes away. I reran the county dispatch conversation back and forth in my head. Ten-fourteen. Ten-fifteen. Ten-forty-four. No, wait, that was a federal income tax form. I shook my head. I needed to print out the ten-codes one of these days. At least maybe I'd find out what a ten-ninety-six was.

It occurred to me that maybe I didn't want to know.

I pulled down Dead End Lane and into the circle driveway of the Holloway house, and my worst fears were confirmed when I spotted Joe's Buick. I threw the Plymouth into park, jumped out of my car and hurried up the driveway. I almost jumped out of my black panties when a figure came from around the side of the house.

"Who goes there?" rang out.

I shook my head. Theatrical to the end.

"Joe!" I whispered as loudly as I could. "What the hell are you doing? Get over here! The cops are only about five minutes out!"

"Let 'em come," Joe said, stomping up to me in all his outraged tweedish splendor. "I want that woman's perfidy exposed."

He wanted what exposed?

I took his arm and guided him toward our vehicles. "Listen, Joe, you may want to right a wrong here, but the way to do that is not via county lockup," I told him. "So get in your car and let's get out of here. Now!"

Joe shook his head. "Fine thing. The old bat wouldn't even admit to the prom date when her assistant showed her the photo," he said. "Warts and all."

I frowned. "She had warts?"

"Figure of speech, girlie," Joe said, shoving a photograph in my face. "Let's just say fifty years ago she could've been arrested for mooning when she looked out a window," he added.

I shook my head and waved the picture away. "Maybe there's a perfectly good reason for her not remembering," I told him. "One thing I do know: There is no good reason for us to hang around here. Now move it, Van Helsing, or your vampire-hunting days are over!"

I shoved him and his photograph into his car and hoofed it back to mine. I jumped in and turned the key in the car. The motor turned over, but wouldn't start. I tried again.

"Don't do this to me now, Whitey!" I wailed. "I'll donate you to the Society for the Preservation of the Barn Owl, and they'll auction your butt off," I warned.

Joe drove forward around the circular drive and out onto the dirt road. At least he wouldn't be caught, I thought with relief, until I saw the headlights in my outside mirror. I turned around to see Joe pull in behind me.

"You old fool!" I muttered. "What are you doing?"

About that moment I felt his bumper collide with mine--a jarring jolt that didn't quite send my head into the windshield. I couldn't believe it. The guy was pushing me!

I didn't know what to do. I couldn't get out of the car, because it was in motion, and the guy behind the wheel of the car behind my car had the night vision of a glaucoma patient wearing sunglasses, so I slammed the gearshift into neutral before the maniac behind me trashed my transmission. I steered as best I could, negotiating the curve in the driveway with a wing and a prayer, thankful I'd had experience behind the wheels of farm tractors and other implements of husbandry that weren't equipped with power steering.

I kept turning the key of the Plymouth, hoping it would fire and take off.

We had just made it through the circle driveway and out onto Dead End Lane when another twist of the key brought success. The engine started, and I honked the horn and stuck a hand out my window.

I was ready to spin my tires and get the heck out of the place when I saw the lights coming straight toward me. No sirens, but the top lights were fully engaged. I proceeded slowly in the direction of the approaching patrol car, feeling like I was a participant in a high-stakes game of chicken and, I must admit, getting a wee bit of a high out of it--until I saw the driver slam on his brakes and the patrol car slide sideways in the roadway, effectively blocking any avenue of escape, that is.

I watched those oh-so-familiar revolutions of the patrol car's light bar, and shook my head.

Caught on Dead End Lane in front of Haunted Holloway Hall in the dark of night with a county mountie between me and freedom, and an old-timer with a heavy-duty bumper and ego issues backing me up.

I shook my head. I was trapped in one doozy of a tale to tremble by. Classic. Just classic.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I slowed my car to a stop and stayed put. I'd learned that much from prior experiences with law enforcement. I hoped Joe followed my example.

I watched the progress of the officer as he exited his car, flashlight in his left hand, the fingers of his right hand hovering over the holster that was fastened to the gun belt. The gun belt that belonged to the county mountie that was about to bust our sorry hides. Seems to me I remember a children's story about a house that Jack built that went something like that.

I sat still and waited for the officer to make his way back to me. He came up along the passenger's-side door and flashed his light inside the car. I waved, relieved that it wasn't Deputy Doug--or Deputy Doughboy as I called him. One of the nicer things I called him. He flashed his light in the backseat, and then I heard him talking into the microphone clipped to his uniform shirt. He rapped on my passenger's-side door, shined the light again--right in the ol' peepers--and let out with a long sigh.

"You want to step out of the vehicle, ma'am?" he called out. "Please."

Did I?

I nodded and laid my shoulder into the door a couple times, and it popped open. "It sticks sometimes," I explained when I almost fell out of the vehicle.

The officer flashed his beam in the direction of Joe's car, and I noticed Joe had gotten out of his vehicle and was approaching the officer. "You two havin' some trouble?" the officer asked.

"Car trouble," I responded. "This gentleman here was just giving me a friendly push." Right into the path of the coppers.

"I see. Can I see some ID?"

We both complied.

"So, what brings you out in these parts?" the deputy asked.

Good question. What did bring us out at the end of a dead-end road at nine o'clock at night?

"Would you believe we're lost?" Joe asked. I winced.

"You're both lost?" the officer asked. "How does something like that happen?"

"It could happen," I told the cop. "You know how men will never stop and ask for directions. Well, I could've been following him and he got lost and we ended up on this road." I ignored the look of indignation Joe gave me.

"I thought you said you had car trouble and he was giving you a push," the officer said.

"That's absolutely right," I replied. "My engine wouldn't start so he was giving me a push." I thought our story, as stories go, wasn't too far outside the realm of possibility. And most of it was true. And what wasn't strictly so, was carefully worded so as to be supposition and not really a falsehood, strictly speaking. And face it, Joe hadn't given me much to work with given the lame "lost" story starter he'd supplied.

"I see," said the officer. "Explain this, then. How did a guy you were following end up behind you to give you a push?" he asked.

Just my luck. A cop who thinks on his shiny black patent leather feet.

"You wouldn't by any chance be the reason that the occupants of that house over there called to report a prowler, would you?"

I shook my head.

"No sir, Officer. Honest," I said. My prowling activities had all occurred earlier in the evening--and, thankfully, gone undetected.

"Uh-huh. And what about you?" he asked Joe. I hoped Joe had come up with a better excuse than his last one for being out here now.

"The truth, Officer?"

Oh, no. What was happening? This couldn't be good.

"Well, I was out here earlier to pay a call on an old friend, welcome her back to Grandville, offer to buy her a cup of coffee and take her around the old hometown, but she didn't remember me. Well, Officer, that disturbed me. Especially when we were close enough to attend her senior prom together. So I got to thinking about that and went home and scared up that old prom photo of the two of us. I thought maybe if she saw it, it would jog her memory." A hankie appeared in his hand as if by magic, and he dabbed at his eye. "It's a sad thing, getting old and forgetting special friends," he said with a sniff.

I wanted to both applaud loudly and, at the same time, hurl in the nearest ditch. I had to give the old guy credit: He was good. He hadn't deviated from the truth, but hadn't blabbed information I'd rather keep from the local authorities. And he'd played the weepy-ol'-man card perfectly.

The deputy nodded. "And you?" he asked me. "Care to change your story?"

I looked at Joe, who wore a smug "top that, girlie" smile.

"I happen to be a friend of Mr. Townsend here," I told the deputy.

"I'm familiar with the nature of the relationship," he said.

In Grandville, who wasn't?

"I work at the
Gazette
and, as fate would have it, I happened to be in county dispatch picking up information for the paper when the call came in. From the description of the uh, ten-ninety-six, I had a good idea it was my friend Joe here. I figured I owed it to the old guy to try and see if I could keep him from getting into any trouble." I felt the unmistakable shifting of Joe's weight beside me. "I'm sorry if my actions have caused more harm than good, Deputy." I only hoped my little performance trumped Joe's boo-hoo, Horatio Noseblower act. "And my car really did need a push," I said. "Sometimes it gets a little temperamental."

"I see," said the deputy.

I hoped not.

"What's this about a ten-ninety-six?" Joe asked. "That means mental subject. Did that senile old bat report
me
as mental? 'Cause if anyone is missing a bookend, it's her."

I gave him a shut-yer-trap look. I should have guessed Joe would know his police ten-codes.

"You two stay put," the deputy told us. "I'm just going to have a visit with the folks up at the house."

"Thank you, Deputy--"

"Cooper," he said.

"Have no fear, we'll stay put, Deputy Cooper," I assured him, reaching out and pumping his hand. "We'll just sit tight. Hang loose. Wait patiently." I get all jittery around coppers. Can you tell?

"You do that." The deputy gave me a long look before he walked back to his car, jumped in and pulled into the driveway.

"Have you written your acceptance speech yet?"

I looked at Joe. "What are you talking about?"

"That was some performance. 'I'm sorry if my actions caused more harm than good'? Since when do you talk like that?"

"Oh? And your little sniff-sniff-boo-hoo 'getting old is soooo sad' production? I couldn't tell if you were going for comedy or tragedy," I countered. "Like, where do you classify something that is so absurd it makes you want to cry?"

"That's what I get for sticking my neck out to help you get your story," Joe said.

"What do you mean?"

"Why do you think I came back here? To lose another box of buttercreams?"

"I think you came back to bludgeon that old lady over the head with that prom photo," I said. "To prove you were right and she was cuckoo."

"So what if I did? That would still get me in the door and you your scoop."

"How would it help me if I didn't even know you were coming back here?"

"I planned to tell you when I'd cinched the deal," Joe said.

"Right," I said. "Right. So what happened? Why'd she call the cops?"

"She? You mean Ms. Dementia? I told you. She told her assistant that wasn't her in the picture. Implied I was trying to run a con on her. Of course, if I'd looked like something from
Dawn of the Dead,
I'd have denied it was me, too."

I raised my eyebrows. "How bad could it be?" I asked.

"How bad? How bad? Let me show you. But I warn you, you'd better have safety goggles on if you want to protect your eyes from retinal damage."

Joe hurried over to his car, opened the door and flicked on the interior lights. "Here, take a gander," he said, handing me a five-by-seven black-and-white photo. He pointed at the female in the photo--at least, I thought it was female. "Take a look at that mug and tell me when she was born the doctor didn't smack her face rather than her tushie."

I studied the photo for a second before I responded, initially taking more time to check out Joe than to check out his pity date. I had to admit Joe cut a rather dashing figure--not exactly Johnny Depp. More like a young Johnny Carson.

I braved a look at Elizabeth Howard and made a face. Joe hadn't just been acting ornery when he'd implied Elizabeth Howard was on the homely side. How ugly was she? She was so ugly, her face was pushed into the dough mixture when making monster cookies.

Weird. I didn't recall her author photograph being all that bone-chilling. I guess some things did improve with age.

"So she wasn't a beauty queen in her younger days," I said, recalling some school photos of mine that would have served nicely as rodent deterrents if posted around the barn and tack room. "Big deal. What does she look like now?" I asked.

"How the heck should I know?" Joe asked, and I gave him a funny look.

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't see her, remember? She wouldn't leave her cave. I expect she was too busy hanging upside down."

"You didn't talk to her this time either? Didn't see her at all?"

"Nope. She made that assistant of hers haul her cookies up and down those stairs half a dozen times, only to have her tell me, 'Joe Townsend, I never knew ye. Now bugger off,'" Joe said with a snap of his fingers.

I shook my head. "I don't know. Something doesn't add up," I said, although math was never one of my better subjects. "It seems to me there's more here than meets the eye. Something Ms. Courtney Howard does not want the world to find out."

"Apart from the fact that they filmed
Gorillas in the Mist
in her shower, you mean?" Joe asked.

I gave him an annoyed look. "Yeah. Apart from that."

"What are you thinking? Some big scandal?"

I thought about it. There was the boy toy factor, but that alone wouldn't keep Courtney Howard from seeing an old friend. I considered this for a moment. Unless she really didn't remember the man who'd saved her from ultimate prom humiliation.

I remembered what Vanessa had said about Courtney Howard not being well and facing a tight deadline. Plus there was a decadelong record of isolation, as well as a string of mediocre reviews to consider. What it all added up to, I wasn't quite sure, but I had to think it had less to do with an unflattering photo from the past and more to do with lower sales ranks, poor reviews and killer deadlines. And the underlying reasons for these difficulties? Well, now, maybe that was the real story here, pilgrim.

"I'm not sure what the heck is going on, Joe," I said, "but the clock's ticking, and now that Courtney Howard knows someone is aware she's in Grandville, no telling how long she'll stick around."

I was about to ask Joe if I could take the photo and scan a copy of it into the computer at work to run with an article, figuring that might be as much of a scoop as I got, when I heard a soft whimper like that of a sad child or lonely puppy.

"Did you hear that?" I asked Joe.

"Hear what?"

I put a hand on Joe's sleeve and listened. Distant yet unmistakable sounds of crying reached me. I saw Joe look up and around.

"That!" I said. "Do you hear that?"

"Who the devil is it?" Joe asked.

I took his arm in a death grip. "Loralie," I whispered. "It's Loralie!"

I felt Joe's arm tense under mine.

"Loralie Holloway?" Joe asked. "But she's dead."

I shivered and moved closer to the old fellow beside me. "I know," I said. "That's the problem."

"I thought all that talk was just that--talk," Joe said, and I felt him inch closer to me.

"Me, too," I said. "Until the other night."

Joe looked at me. "What do you mean, until the other night? What happened?"

I peered at the inky darkness around us. "I think I saw a ghost," I told him.

Joe moved closer. We were packed together tighter than Cracker Jacks in a box. "What do you mean, you
think
you saw a ghost? Either you saw one or you didn't."

I kept an eye on the trees that bordered the road's edge. "I definitely saw something," I said. "Last night when I was doing some preinterview snooping."

"What did you see?"

I tightened my hold on Joe's arm. "The lady in white," I told him. "And she was weeping."

Joe's own gaze moved across the grove of tall, spooky trees that surrounded us. I suddenly caught a whiff of something vaguely familiar. I sniffed hard.

"Do you smell that?" I asked Joe.

"What? Your rose perfume? Smells good."

I felt my legs begin to do a nervous jig. "I'm not wearing rose perfume," I said. "I'm wearing Bargain City Vibrant Vanilla body splash. Loralie was fond of roses."

Joe gave me a long look, probably to make sure I wasn't pulling his leg. When he noticed the absence of a smile, he sprang into action.

"I'm outta here!" he said, jumping through the open door of his car. I piled in after him.

We sat silent as the--well, you know--staring out the windshield at the cloak of black around us.

"A little prior information about your paranormal observations would have been nice," Joe said.

"It could've been a sheet," I told him.

"Remember how it turned out the last time you kept information from me?" he reminded me.

"What are the chances that something bizarre like that could happen again?" I asked.

A sudden gust of wind rocked the car gently, whipping up dust and dirt in winding threads along the country road. I looked out the front windshield and squinted when I realized that this particular wind carried something else as well. I could only stare open-mouthed at the object that had fluttered to rest right before my startled eyes. There on Joe's windshield was a solitary dark red rose petal.

"Is that a rose petal?" Joe asked as I continued to gaze at the object stuck to the glass.

I could only nod in response.

"Didn't you buy yellow roses?"

I nodded again. "Loralie favored red roses," I whispered.

"Oh." Several loud swallows followed.

A sudden noise sounded on the window to my left, and Joe and I screamed louder than the hometown fans when the refs had blown a crucial call at the football game last Friday night.