Who Killed the Ghost in the Library: A Ghost writer Mystery (7 page)

Chapter 12

Debris rained down on us. Mike reached for his walkie talkie. “This is Chief Penhall. We’ve got a house explosion and fire at 112 Oak Lawn Road. Send EMS and a couple of fire trucks.” He put the walkie talkie on the hood of his car. “Stay down while I take a look.” Standing up, he looked at what was left of Cliff’s house, which wasn’t much.

“Can I get up now?”

“I think so. Just be careful. There’s glass and wood everywhere.”

I started to push myself up, but stopped when I felt a sharp pain in my left wrist. “Damn, that hurts.”

“What’s wrong?” Mike said, kneeling beside me.

“Nothing. I probably just landed on it wrong.” I brushed some leaves out of my hair with my right hand. “You’ve got some cuts on your face and arms.”

“Not surprising, considering the whole house is gone,” he replied, helping me to my feet.

“Oh my gosh,” I said. “How did we survive this?”

“That’s a good question.”

We heard sirens in the distance. Two fire trucks pulled up
and Oliver Malloy, one of the lieutenants, jumped out of his rig and ran over. “What the hell happened, Mike?”

“It blew up, Ollie. What do you think happened?”

“Are you guys alright?” he asked as his men connected a hose to a nearby hydrant and started fighting the fire.

“We’re fine.”

“Dan!” Oliver called to one of his men. “Check those houses. Make sure no one’s home.” He turned back to face us. “EMS will be here in a minute. Get them to check out those cuts to make sure you don’t have any glass or splinters imbedded in your skin.” He ran off to help his men.

“I guess we don’t have to worry about looking at that police report now,” I said.

“Definitely not,” he said as an ambulance pulled up behind us.

“Hey, Mike, what happened?” Kim Thurston, one of the paramedics
asked as she got out. “Is this a new interrogation technique? Blow up their house to get them to talk?”

“Very funny, Kim. Don’t quit your day job,” Mike replied. “Kim Thurston, this is Cam Shaw.
I think she might have a sprained wrist.”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Let me be the judge of that,” Kim said, gently taking my left arm in her hands. She gently pressed on it, and I winced when she got to my wrist. “Mike might be right, as much as I hate to admit it. Corey, bring me an ACE bandage.”

“Well, at least it isn’t my writing hand,” I said as
Corey, the other paramedic, came over with a small brown wrap.

Kim expertly wrapped my wrist
. “You’ve got a few cuts, but I don’t see any pieces of glass or splinters,” Kim said. “The folks at the hospital will do a more thorough job.”

“Sounds like so much fun.”

“Pure torture,” she laughed. “There are some real sadistic nurses in the E.R. who just love to dig around and look for foreign objects. They’re going to have a field day with you, Mike. I see stitches in your future.”

“Later. Right now, I’ve got an investigation to start,” he said, pointing toward the fire.

“I hope no one was in there,” Kim replied.

Mike shook his head. “This was Cliff Scott’s house.”

“Oh man,” Kim said. “I heard about the accident yesterday. He was a good man. He’ll be missed. Listen, can you drive yourself to the hospital? Corey and I need to stay here in case one of the firefighters needs medical attention. The other ambulance is on another call. An accident out on 287.”

“I told you, I’m not leaving,” Mike said.

“And I’m telling you that you need stitches. It looks like it is going to take them a couple of hours to get this under control. That is more than enough time to go to the hospital and get checked out.”

“Alright, alright,” he grumbled.
I grabbed my messenger bag out of the 442, and he helped me into his Bronco. After a quick word with Oliver, he got in and drove off.

“What did Oliver say?”

“He’s going to call the gas company and ask them to turn it off in the neighborhood until they get the fire under control.”

“I wonder why the other houses didn’
t blow up, too.”

Mike shrugged. “
Beats me. I’m sure the arson investigator will figure it out.”

“I forgot to say thank you.”

“For what?”

“For saving my life.”

“You shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”

“I know.”

“So why were you there?”

“Because I don’t like being told that I can’t do something. And I just wanted to help.”

“Your need to help nearly got you killed.”

“Wow, do you always react this way when someone says thank you?” I asked as he pulled into the hospital parking lot.
“And one other thing: if I hadn’t been where I wasn’t supposed to be, you would have been in the house, which means you would be dead right now. So I saved your life, too. You’re welcome.” As soon as he put the Bronco in park, I opened my door, got out and slammed it shut to show him my frustration.

We didn’t say anything to each other as we walked into the emergency room. Mike flashed his badge at the attending nurse, and she showed us to a room. “What happened to you two?” she asked as I sat down on the bed.

“He was twisting my arm, trying to get me to give up some valuable information, but I wouldn’t talk,” I said.

She gasped and glared at him. “Really, Chief
Penhall! How could you?”

Mike rolled his eyes. “I did not torture her. We were near a house that exploded.”

“You mean that one on Oak Lawn?” He nodded. “We heard about that. Are there any other people who are hurt?”

“No, we’re the only two,” he assured her.

“I’ll send the attending in here. I’m sure he is going to order X-rays on that arm, but we need to clean up those cuts first. We need to make sure there’s no glass or metal in them.”

She left for a few minutes, and came back with another nurse. Each nurse had a stainless steel basin, antiseptic, tweezers and bandages. Twenty minutes later, the first nurse was done cleaning my wounds. She walked me down to
X-ray while the attending doctor came in to stitch up Mike’s arm and forehead.

“How are you doing?” he asked me when I came back in.

“Not exactly what I had planned for today.”

“Same here.”

“My parents are going to freak out when I show up with all these bandages.”

“I’m sure your mother will feed you lots of muffins and chocolate chip cookies.”

“No doubt.” We sat there for a few minutes, not saying anything. “Mike, why would someone blow up Cliff’s house?”

“For the same reason they ran him over yesterday.”

“I thought he was retired. Has he been working on anything lately?”

“He did come in last month, asking me about a missing person’
s case from the 1960s.”

“Why?”

“He didn’t say. I couldn’t find anything in our files about it.”

“Do you think it could be connected to the
Ashtons?”

He shrugged. “No clue.”

“Do you remember the name of the person?”

“Nope, but I might have a note about it at the office. I’ll have to check.”

The attending doctor came in at that moment. “It’s just a bad sprain, nothing broken. We’ll give you a splint for it. Wear it for a couple of weeks and follow up with your regular doctor.”

“
Thanks.”

An hour later, I had a dark
blue splint with Velcro strips and a prescription for pain medication. “How am I supposed to use my keyboard with this bulky thing on?” I groused as Mike drove us back to Oak Lawn Drive.

“Very carefully.
Hen pecking works well.”

“Oh, you’re a lot of help. Keep it up, funny man, and I’ll club you on the head with this thing.”

“It will hurt you more than me,” he pointed out as he parked behind one of the fire trucks.

I resisted the urge to stick my tongue out at him as we got out. Oliver met us near my car. “The fire’s out. The windows were blown out in the nearby houses, but no one was hurt. We didn’t find a body in the remains of the house.”

“He was killed yesterday in a car accident,” Mike said. “He was one of us.”

“Who?”

“Clifford Scott.”

“Man, that’s horrible. He was a great guy. You’ll let us know when the funeral is, right? I know a lot of our guys will want to pay their respects.”

“Absolutely,” Mike replied. “Is there anything you can tell me about how this started?”

“What did you see when you got here?” Oliver said.

“I smelled gas first. Cam saw a fire on the left side of the house. We managed to duck behind my Bronco right before it blew.”

“You mean you threw me to the ground,” I said. “How do you think I got the
sprained wrist?”

“Better to have a
sprain than to die from an explosion,” Oliver pointed out.

“Good point.”

“So whoever started the fire must have driven off just before you got here,” Oliver said.

I shook my head. “I got here first, and I didn’t pass anyone.”

“Me, either,” Mike said.

We all looked toward the house. “There are some trees a few hundred yards behind the house,” Oliver said.
“There’s a street on the other side. Maybe whoever did this went that way.”

“Grab some of your men for a search,” Mike said. “We’ll spread out and search the area from the back of the house to the other street.” He turned to me. “You stay here.”

“Not a chance. You need all the eyes you can get to find this guy,” I said, moving toward the woods. I heard him say something to Oliver as I walked off.

Oliver called for four of his guys, and the seven of us spread out. There was lots of debris from the house back here as well, so we had to make our way carefully around it, making sure we didn’t get cut or stabbed by anything. “You see anything?” Mike called out to me.

“Nothing yet. You?”

“Negative.”

I walked a few more yards before a sound stopped me. I stood quietly and listened. Somewhere to my right, I heard a low moan. I moved toward it, stopping every few feet to listen. The third time I stopped, I heard it again, louder this time. I went a few more feet and almost stumbled over a man. “Mike! Over here!” I knelt down next to the man and felt for a pulse. He was still alive, but he had a large piece of wood sticking out of the middle of his back.

Mike and Oliver came running up to me. “Holy cow,” Mike said, kneeling down next to me. “Is he still alive?”

I nodded. “You think this is our arsonist?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Mike said, checking the man’s pockets. “No wallet.”

“Maybe he was in one of the other houses,” I suggested.

Oliver called for the paramedics. “Let’s worry about who he is later. Right now, he needs to get to the hospital.”

Kim and Corey showed up a few minutes later, did what they could for him and loaded him face down on a backboard. The four firefighters carried him out, with Kim, Corey and Oliver right behind them. “We should get going, too,” Mike said.

“I say we keep going.”

“Why?”

“I wonder if this guy has a car on the other street.”

“Good question,” Mike replied. “Let’s go.”

It took another ten minutes to walk through the woods to the next street. Care to guess what we found parked by the curb?

A 1970s gold Cadillac.

Chapter 13

“Well, this is a surprise,” I said as we approached the Caddy.

We looked at the front end of the car, and what I saw made me flinch. I could see
the point of impact where the driver had hit Cliff, the cracked windshield as he had gone up and over. I bit my lower lip to keep from crying. Mike reached over and squeezed my right hand. “You ok?” I nodded. “Is this the car that you saw yesterday afternoon?”

“Yes.”

Mike walked over to the passenger side and tried the door handle. It swung open. “Let’s see if we can find some identification for our mystery man.”

A complete search of the car turned up nothing. “I can’t believe there isn’t even an insurance card in the glove box,” I said.

“I can run the VIN number and get a name that way,” Mike said, walking around to the driver’s side. He used his cell phone to call his dispatcher. “Are you sure, Kathy? From where? Alright, call Artie and have him tow this thing to the impound yard.” He hung up. “You won’t believe this.”

“It’s stolen.”

“Good guess. Stolen out of San Marcos a week ago. It belongs to a Maybelline Reynolds.”

“And she only drove it to church on Sundays.”

“Actually, she is the madam of the local brothel.”

“Wow.”

“She’s threatening to sue the San Marcos police department because the car was stolen out of their impound yard. It was confiscated during a raid on her brothel.”

“So we’ve got nothing?” I said.

“
We
don’t have anything. I have an unconscious guy at the hospital.”

“Oh come on, Mike.”

“No, Cam,” he said. “It’s bad enough you followed me to Cliff’s house…”

“Excuse me, I got there first.”

“It doesn’t matter who got there first. You shouldn’t have been there at all! Your father is going to have my head on a platter when he sees that splint of yours. Go home, take it easy.”

“I might go see my grandmother.”

“Don’t go there,” Mike warned me.

“Go where? I’m allowed to go see her if I want to.”

“You’re going to go complain to her, and she’ll complain to my grandfather, who will tell me off.”

“I would never do anything like that,” I said innocently.

“Bull,” he replied. “This is an active investigation, with no indication that this is connected to what you are working on. If and when I find a connection, then we’ll talk. Until then…”

“I know, I know, butt out.”

“Exactly. By the way, Oliver told me that your car isn’t drivable.”

“What?”

“He said some wood punctured the two passenger side tires. He’s arranged for it to be towed to Artie’s Garage.”

“That was nice of him. Guess I better call Randy.”

“He took care of that, too. He’ll be waiting for you over on Oak Lawn.”

“Well, alright then. I guess I’ll walk back over there. Thanks for the ride to the hospital.”

“Sorry I sprained your arm.”

“You saved my life. I think it all evens out.”

“Make sure you tell that to your parents.”

There wasn’t much to say after that. I really wanted to go home; my arm was really throbbing inside the
splint, and I didn’t have any adrenaline left. I said goodbye and walked through the woods, where I saw Randy waiting for me. “What happened to you?” he said as I got into his car.

I pointed at the remains of Cliff Scott’s house. “That’s what happened.”

“Tell me everything!”

So I gave him a rundown on everything that had happened. As I finished, Randy parked in front of the coffeehouse. “Do you think this is connected to the
Ashtons?” he said.

I shrugged. “Mike’s right. We have no proof that there is any connection at all. Right now, it’s a total coincidence. This could have something to do with one of his old cases. And since the house
went sky high, we can’t get our hands on the old police report about Stanley’s death.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Randy said cryptically.

“What do you mean?”

“When I talked to Cliff on the phone yesterday, I asked him if he had a copy of the report. He said he had the original, and he agreed to give us a copy. He gave it to me before he met you.”

“But he told me he didn’t bring it with him.” He shrugged. “Randy, I could kiss you!”

“Oh God, please don’t,” he said. “It would be like kissing my sister. Gross and wrong.”

“So where’s the report?”

“In my office at the bookstore.”

“Did you read it yet?”

“Nope.”

“Why didn’t you give it to me yesterday?”

“It slipped my mind after the accident.”

“Would you mind getting it for me?”

Randy looked at the coffeehouse. “I think I’d rather be at the bookstore than in there with you.”

“What do you mean?”

He pointed to the front door. I turned to look and cringed at what I saw. My parents were standing in the doorway, waiting for me to come in. “Oh, this is going to be fun.”

“I’ll go get the file and meet you inside,” he said, bolting from the car. I got out and watched him run across the street. Coward.

The problem with being a preacher’s kid is that your parents know what you’ve been doing before you even get home. It was that way when I was a kid (remind me to tell you about the time I got pulled over in front of the Catholic church, two blocks from my house), and it remained that way even though I’m an adult. “Are you alright?” Mother said, giving me a hug.

“I’m fine, Mother, I promise.” I gave Dad a hug before we all went inside. “Who ratted me out this time?”

“Mary Beth.” She worked in the billing department
at the hospital. “She saw your name pop up on her screen, but she wasn’t sure what had happened to you,” Dad replied.

“Cliff Scott’s house exploded this morning.”

“Good Lord!” he said. “What were you doing there?”

“I was with the police chief. We were going to look for an old report,” I said. I’d have to warn Mike before he ran into my father again, since I made it sound like we were working together. “Mike saved my life. He pushed me to the ground behind his
Bronco just as the house exploded.”

“Is he alright?”

“He had to have stitches on his forehead and his arm, but otherwise he’s ok. I need two new tires on the 442, though. The old ones were punctured by flying wood.”

“What did the doctor say about your arm?” Mother said.

“It’s just a sprain, and a few minor cuts and bruises. I’m fine, honest. Just a little sore.”

“You could have been killed,” she said.

“I’m aware of that, Mom. But I’m fine, really. There is some good news out of all this. We found the car that killed Cliff Scott.”

“Are you sure?” Dad said.

I pictured the car again. “Very sure. We also found the driver. Mike thinks he may have caused the house explosion.”

“Sounds like someone had it in for Cliff,” Dad said. “I wonder why.”

I shrugged. “No clue, Dad. Not my job. I get paid to write and sell books, and coffee.”

Randy came in with a manila envelope in his hand. “Hello, Reverend Shaw, Mrs. Shaw. I came to take Cam home.”

“Have you had lunch yet?” Mother asked.

I looked at my watch, and realized it was almost 2 pm. “No, I haven’t, but we’ll grab something on the way home.”

“Hold on a minute,” she said. She disappeared into the kitchen, and came back a few minutes later with a couple of plastic bags. “We had some chicken tortellini soup left over from lunch. There’s also some fresh bread and cookies in the other bag.” She handed the bags to Randy.

“Thanks, Mom,” I said, standing up to give her another hug.

“Just go home and take care of yourself,” she said.

“Where are they taking the
442?” Dad said.

“To Artie’s Garage.”

“I’ll call him, see if we can get you a deal on those tires.”

“Thanks.”

“Take her home, Randy, and make sure she stays there the rest of the day,” Dad said.

“I will, sir.”

After another round of hugs, we left. Randy put the food in the back seat floorboard as I got in the car. “You alright?” he said as we drove off.

“Do you know what kind of adrenaline rush you get from almost being killed?”

“No, and I hope I never go through that.”

“Just think of something that totally freaked you out, and then multiply that by a hundred. That’s what it felt like.”

“Better you than me,” he said.

“Thanks a lot.”

Ten minutes later, he pulled into the driveway of my house. I had purchased my brown brick house with the advance I got from the first book I had done as a ghost writer. You probably read it; it was for a well-known Hollywood star with lots of juicy gossip. The house had three bedrooms, two bathrooms, living room, dining room, kitchen, and a big backyard. I had turned one of the bedrooms into an office. It was nice to have a place I could call my own after all those years of moving around as a kid.

Randy took the food to the kitchen and warmed up the soup, while I went to my bedroom and changed into my lounging clothes. The fingers on my left hand felt swollen, and my arm was itching inside the
splint. It was going to be a long two weeks.

“Come and get it,” he called from the kitchen.
I could smell the soup, and it was a heavenly smell. Then again, what child didn’t think their mom’s cooking was the best?

After a bowl of soup, two slices of warm bread, and a few cookies, I felt much better. I finished my sweet tea as Randy cleaned the dishes. “Where did you put that envelope you got from Cliff?” I said.

“It’s right here,” he said, grabbing it off the counter and handing it to me.

“Have you read the report yet?”

“Nope, I was waiting for you.”

“This is pretty thick for a simple police report,” I said as I opened it.

“Didn’t someone tell you it was a very thorough investigation?” Randy asked as he sat down.

“Yeah, I know, but this still seems like a lot,” I replied, shuffling through the pages. “Hm, odd.”

“What’s odd?”

“There seems to be more than one report here. Look, this is the report on Stanley’s suicide. It’s only five pages. But then there is another report here, dated
1968. I bet this is that missing person case Cliff talked to Mike about last month.”

“Who is the missing person?”

I scanned the first page. “You won’t believe me when I tell you.”

“Who is it?”

“Raymond Foley, husband of one Agatha Foley.”