The Ghoul Next Door (21 page)

I heard Michel sniffle on the other end of the line. “Thanks, M.J. I hope he’s okay. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

“Good man,” I said, relieved that this was just a small spat between them. Michel had been a wonderful influence on Gilley, and I wanted them to stay together.

Heath and I helped Gil to bed, and by that, I mean we pretty much carried him all the way to the bedroom, hovered him over the bed, and let go before making a hasty retreat.

The next morning Gil was on my couch again looking hungover and moody.

Perfect.

“Hey, bud,” I said, keeping to the far side of the room just in case. “How ya doin’ this morning?”

Gilley’s narrowed eyes became slits. “Would you please explain how
this
happened?” As he turned his head a little more to the side, I saw the bruise by his right temple.

I decided to take the fifth. “Oooo, that looks like it hurt. How’d you do that?”

“You don’t know?”

I widened my eyes and shrugged my shoulders. “No, honey love, I surely don’t.”

“You’re a liar, Mary Jane Holliday. Every time you tell a lie, your Southern drawl comes out.”

“Fine. You drank too much and got intimate with your kitchen floor.”

Gil rubbed his temple. “Was that so hard?”

“No. But when you get drunk and hurt yourself, you usually blame me.”

“It’s usually your fault.”

“Riiiiight. Is there coffee?”

Gil thumbed over his shoulder toward the kitchen and I headed there for some much needed joe. “Where’s Heath?” Gil called while I was pouring a cup.

“He went for a run.”

“You didn’t go with him?”

“I was too tired,” I said, coming back into the living room. Doc was already up and nibbling on a bird toy. After moving over to his cage to give him a kiss, I switched my attention back to Gil, who was typing on the computer. “What’cha doin’?”

“I’m researching Mr. Eades,” Gil replied.

My brain was still a little foggy from just getting up, and I drew a blank on the name.

“The landlord on the Stoughton Street house,” Gil said before I could even ask.

I moved over to sit next to Gil. “What’d you find?”

Gil sighed. “Nothing but his age and home address. The guy doesn’t have an online footprint, which makes figuring out who he is and what he’s about difficult. Everybody needs to get digital. It makes my job so much easier.”

I quickly told him about Heath’s conversation with Eades and Gil glared at me. “You’d think he’d tell me that before I spent an hour looking for dirt on the man.”

“You know what we need to do?” I said, going for an enthusiastic tone.

“What?”

“Send you down to the public records office with Kendra. Have you fish around and see about coming up with a name attached to that trust. I really want to talk to the owner.”

Gil leveled a suspicious look at me. “And while I’m down in the bowels of paperwork hell, what’re
you
going to be doing?”

“Uh . . . running down more leads.”

“What leads?”

I tried to think quickly, but Gil’s question had thrown me and I was having a hard time coming up with something. “Heath has a list,” I said.

“Really?” Gil said . . . maybe a wee bit too enthusiastically. “Show me this list of amazing leads you two will be
so
busy running down!”

“Like I said, Heath has it.”

“He took it with him on his run, huh?”

“He takes it everywhere he goes.”

“How stupid do you think I am?”

“That feels like a trap.”

Gil slurped his coffee and turned back to his computer. “Best get dressed, sugar. We’ve got a long day ahead of us in the bowels of paperwork hell.”

•   •   •

Heath still wasn’t back from his run by the time we were ready to roll, so I left him a note (that begged him to come find and save me from the bowels of paperwork hell), and we headed downtown to meet Kendra. Gil parked the van in one of the parking garages and we found Kendra on the steps of the building texting on her phone.

“Kendra!” I called.

She jumped a little and looked up. I waved and she waved back. I introduced Gil and Kendra thrust out her hand, a glint of interest in her eye. “Hi,” she said. “Nice to meet you. M.J. didn’t tell me you were such a cutie.”

Gil blushed and I wondered if Kendra was one of those rare individuals that didn’t recognize a gay man even if he came packaged in a pink feather boa. “Aww,” he said. “Stop it! And by that, I mean, go on, please.”

The two laughed and she winked at me; she was definitely interested in Gil. Oh, this ought to be good.

We headed in and took the elevator down two floors to some basement level, then followed behind Kendra along a dark corridor into a room at the end that was filled with volumes of large record books, most of which looked very old.

There was a woman at a wooden desk who appeared to be as old as the oldest, dust-covered volume, and she croaked for us to sign in. We did and then Kendra waved at the volumes. “These are all the property records. First we have to look up the legal description . . .” Kendra’s voice trailed off as she headed toward a stack of books to the far right.

I looked at Gilley and crossed my eyes; he giggled and crossed his too. We let Kendra take the lead and soon the both of us were standing dumbly next to her while she flipped pages in a huge volume. At that moment my phone bleeped. It was a text from Heath.

I’m outside in the car with the motor running if you want to attempt an escape.

I tucked my phone back in my pocket and turned to the withered woman at the desk. “Which way is the ladies’ room?”

She croaked out a response and I excused myself, promising to be right back. The minute I was out the door, I ran for the elevator. Pressing the button, I tapped my foot anxiously until the doors opened. I rode it up to the main floor and walked quickly out of the building, finding Heath just down the street, double-parked and staring at his phone—probably waiting for me to text him back. I dashed to the car and got inside. “Go!” I yelled, and he hit the gas.

We zipped away and no sooner had we rounded the corner than Gilley called my phone. “Hello?” I said.

“You ditched me, didn’t you?”

“Not at all, honey. I’m in the ladies’ room.” I motioned for Heath to drive faster.

“I can hear sounds of traffic in the background, M.J.”

“There’s a window open in the ladies’ room.”

“We’re belowground.”

“I went to the one upstairs.” A car honked right next to us and I sent the driver a dirty look.

“When are you gonna give up the ruse?”

I sighed. “Probably now. We’re far enough away that you can’t catch us.”

“Yes, but I know where you live.” With that, he hung up.

I put my phone away. “Gil says hi.”

Heath chuckled. “He’ll get even, you know.”

“I’ll worry about that later. For now I’m just glad to be out of that dungeon. That was gonna be a hell of a boring morning.”

“Yeah, well, I actually have a good reason for springing you.”

I eyed him with interest. “What’s that?”

Heath turned to me and bounced his eyebrows. “I have a lead.”

“You do?”

He nodded. “I took the car and parked it downtown. Then I went for a run down Stoughton Street and talked to one of the neighbors.”

“You did?”

“Yep.”

“That was really smart, honey. I didn’t even think of that.”

“That’s why you keep me around, Em. I’m good for a few things.”

I laughed. “Oh, honey, you are good for more than just a few things.” It was my turn to bounce my eyebrows.

“Anyway, the guy who lives next door said that the house has seen quite a few tenants over the years. For the most part, the renters keep to themselves, but he became friendly with one guy who lived there about three years ago. A guy named Ken Chamblis.”

I gasped. “Killer Ken!”

Heath nodded. “The neighbor, Brad Rowe, says that Ken was a little weird, but they got along, and they used to hang out and share a beer every once in a while down at the pub at the corner of Stoughton and Knox.”

I consulted my internal map of the area. “That’s about three blocks away from the rental house, right?”

“Four. And get this: Brad says that Ken moved out shortly after one of the waitresses from the bar was found murdered in the alley behind the pub.”

My eyes widened. “Do you think . . . ?”

Heath shrugged. “Pretty suspicious coincidence, don’t you think?”

“Did you research the murder?”

“I didn’t have a chance. I had kind of a long run back to the car, and by the time I got to the condo you weren’t there, so I had to shower and see if I could coax you out of the records room.”

“Ha! Didn’t take much, did it?”

Heath reached over and squeezed my knee. “Didn’t figure it would, babe.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“I think we should start with the pub and see if anybody who used to work there during the time of the murder remembers Ken and this waitress. It’s just about eleven thirty anyway. How about I buy you an early lunch?”

“You’re just full of good ideas,” I said.

We parked in the small lot at the front of the pub—Sheedy’s Place—and headed inside. The bar was dark and dingy—as if it’d never seen a decent scrubbing. We took a seat at the bar and Heath ordered beers for the both of us. The bartender was a woman who had the practiced and precise movements of someone who’d been at the job awhile. Heath asked for menus and also asked politely for her name. “Tracy,” she said. “Just let me know when you’re ready to order.”

There wasn’t much on the menu for vegetarians, so I ordered a simple side salad and a basket of fries and Heath had the fried fish sandwich. I let him take the lead, as I’d noticed Tracy’s eyes widen a little at the sight of him. I understood completely. Heath was a beautiful guy.

“So, Tracy, a buddy of mine who comes here says there was a waitress who was murdered here a couple of years ago. Is that true?”

Tracy, who’d been tapping at her computer screen, paused and turned to Heath. “You mean Gracie? Yeah, it was really freaky what happened to her.”

“Was she really murdered?” Heath asked.

She gave him an odd look and said, “Why you want to know about that?”

Heath grinned at her in that way that could make women swoon. Pointing to me, then back to himself, he said, “We’re documentary filmmakers, looking for a new topic. My buddy mentioned the murder that happened here, and it sounded interesting. But he didn’t know any details. He told us to come here and talk to someone who might’ve been here that night.”

Tracy cocked her head at him. “I was here that night.”

Heath’s grin widened and he held his fingers up to form a square. “You know, I thought you might’ve been. And I gotta say, you have a face for the camera. If we do this project, I’ll definitely want to interview you.”

Tracy’s face brightened. “Really?”

“Really,” Heath said. “So, what’s the story?”

Tracy moved away from the computer and over to a cutting board, where she began slicing lemons. “No one really knows exactly. I mean, it was just another Tuesday night and kinda slow. Gracie, me, and Sarah—another waitress—were working and Sarah really wanted to go home early, but it wasn’t Gracie’s night to close. Anyway, Sarah—who’s this total drama queen—finally wore Gracie down and talked her into closing, but Gracie wanted one more smoke before Sarah left, so she heads out back ’cause that’s the only place we were allowed to smoke back then, and after about twenty or twenty-five minutes, she’s still not back. We usually only get ten minutes for our breaks, and I thought Gracie was pushing it a little because she was pissed at Sarah, but still, close to a half hour seemed kinda rude. So Sarah asks me to cover for her while she heads off to find Gracie and drag her ass back in here, and about a minute later we all hear screaming. Everybody ran out to see what the hell happened, and Sarah’s standing in the alley, screaming bloody murder. She’s hysterical and she’s pointing at some garbage bags stacked up next to the Dumpster. Nobody knew what the hell was going on until Trevor—our dishwasher—pulled one of the garbage bags aside and there’s Gracie—eyes wide open, this really creepy expression frozen on her face . . . like a grimace or something, and she’s covered in blood. Her throat had been slashed, man. Deep.”

“That must’ve been awful,” I said, feeling bad for Tracy that she’d had to witness that.

“I threw up,” she admitted softly. “And so did Kyle, our manager. Seeing that . . . it still gives me nightmares.” Tracy shuddered and her eyes watered. I felt even worse that we were dredging this up for her.

“Sorry I brought it up,” Heath said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Tracy shrugged, and forced a smile. I could tell she didn’t want him to feel bad. “Hey, what’re you gonna do?” She then held up a finger and moved into the kitchen, returning a moment later with our food.

“Did they ever catch who did it?” I asked as she set the meal down in front of us.

Tracy shook her head. “The police investigated for a couple of weeks, and they thought maybe her ex might’ve done it, but I guess he had this really good alibi.”

“What was that?” Heath asked.

“He was locked up that night for a DUI.”

“Alibis don’t get better than that,” I said.

Tracy nodded. “Nope.”

“Were there any other suspects?” I asked casually. “Like maybe one of the patrons?”

Tracy shook her head. “The police asked us that, and sure, there’re always a couple of customers who have a little too much to drink and get obnoxious, but nobody any of us thought could be capable of that.”

Heath squinted at Tracy. “You sure?” he asked. “Nobody before or after Gracie’s murder sort of give you the creeps?”

Tracy squinted back at him. “Naw,” she said, but then she seemed to catch herself. Lowering her voice, she said, “Well, there is this one guy, but I think he might just be crazy. Sometimes, that is. Other times he’s almost okay. It’s weird. I think when he’s on his meds, he’s okay, but there are days when I don’t exactly want him to stay until closing, you know?”

Heath looked around the bar as if trying to scope out whom she might be talking about. “Is he here now?”

She shook her head. “No. But he comes in usually around lunchtime.”

“What’s his name?” I asked.

“Ken.”

“Ken?” I said.

“Yeah. I don’t know his last name. But he’s weird.”

“Weird how?” Heath pressed.

Tracy seemed to think about it for a minute. “It’s hard to say. Like, he used to be almost normal but not quite, you know? Like, he wouldn’t say much, but he’d watch people like he suspected them in some way. It’s hard to explain, but he had an edge to him. A mean edge. He was someone you just knew you didn’t want to piss off, ’cause he’d find a way to get even and the punishment would be way more intense than the crime. Anyway, he used to come in with another guy . . . Brian . . . no . . . Brad, I think. Brad was super nice, and he seemed to chill Ken out when Ken started to get ticked off about something or at someone. Ken was here almost every Tuesday and Thursday night, and his buddy Brad joined him usually on Thursdays, but right after Gracie was murdered, both of them stopped coming in. That wasn’t unusual—the murder sent a lot of our regulars packing. I saw Brad once by himself about a month after the murder, but he said that his wife was about to have a baby and he didn’t think he’d be able to come in again after the kid was born.”