Beneath the Mall of Madness (A Jaspar Windisle Mystery Book 1) (13 page)

“Oh?” She pulled a pamphlet out and handed it to Zebulon.

“Does this look legitimate to you?” She asked. From my vantage point, it looked as professional as any other brochure you’d find at a visitor’s center.

“No,” Zebulon said, passing it to Earl.

“That’s it, no?” She said.

“My cousin’s been complaining about them crossing his property. I can assure you, they’re trespassing,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

“That tour wasn’t offered the last time I was here,” she said. “Some members of my team went on it and they never came back.”

“Why didn’t you report it to the police?” Earl asked. He handed me the pamphlet. It did look professional, and it was advertising a late night expedition to Bishop’s Corner. It guaranteed a real cryptid sighting or a full refund. ‘See the Beast Locals Don’t Want You to Know About!’ it offered. I could see how someone who was into that sort of thing would be tempted.

“When I asked at their hotels the front desk said no one by those names had checked in. I’ve tried every hotel, and they all claim never to have heard of my teammates.”

“Which hotel were they supposed to be staying at?” Earl asked. She named three hotels, all ones I had rejected when I first arrived.

“We were a large group,” she said by way of explanation. “The hotels claimed to be too full to accommodate all of us, but I haven’t seen nearly as many people as the last time I was here and I didn’t have any trouble booking then.”

“Have you talked to anyone else who’s had members of their party disappear?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

“Most people would take their whole group to something like this,” Zebulon said. “She’s probably unusual in staying behind.”

“There was nothing unusual about it,” Dr. Cassidy said. “Our spectroscope broke. I’ve been working on it all day every day for weeks. I was too tired to go on a midnight tour.”

“Did you ask the tour guide?” Earl asked.

“No. There’s no contact number on the pamphlet. If you want to see them you have to go on a tour, and there’s no way I’m going near it until I find out what happened to my teammates!”

Earl continued to ask her questions. I went to the bar to get another drink. Hey, I wasn’t driving. While I was there, an older man in a shabby business suit struck up a conversation with me.

“She’s something, isn’t she?” he said. “It isn’t enough that we’re in the cryptid capital of the world; she has to make up stories to get attention.” He had the same accent as Dr. Cassidy, but stronger. I’d heard it before, I just couldn’t quite place it.

“You don’t think her friends disappeared?”

“She arrived alone,” he said. “I’m in the same hotel as her. I’ve seen her every morning at breakfast, and there was never anyone with her. Then two days ago she started carrying on about how her friends are gone. She’s probably setting up a rival tour. ‘Help me look for my friends!’ This is just her attempt to discredit the competition.”

“Have you been on the tour she’s talking about?”

“Of course,” he said. “No one disappeared, I can assure you.”

“Then what did happen?” I asked. “Did you see the promised monster? What was it?”

“I can’t tell you,” he said. “The surprise is the best part. You should try it and see. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity.” I looked down at the pamphlet.

“Thanks, maybe I will. What did you say your name was?”

“Dr. Abe Finch,” he said, extending his hand. His hand was greasy, and his grip was strong. He let go of my hand without shaking it, with an expression suggesting he’d touched something unclean, but I was the one left wiping my hand on a napkin.

“Are you also here for research?” I asked him. He seemed not to notice me scrubbing my hands clean.

“No, I’m a doctor of mathematics,” he said. “Searching for rare animals is my hobby.”

“What kind of rare animals?” I asked. “Everyone is a bit cagey about what there is to find here.”

“That’s the best part about this place,” he said. “If you can name it, someone has claimed to see it here. I think there might be psychotropic drugs in the soil, but as long as I see cryptids I’m not complaining.”

“Does that anything include chupacabras?” I asked.

“That one I haven’t heard,” Dr. Finch said. He leaned closer to me. Too close. There was a faint unpleasant smell wafting off him. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. I wasn’t even sure I’d ever smelled it before. I knew I didn’t want to smell it for long. “Why, have you seen one?”

“Not in town,” I said. “I meant where the new mall is going to be.”

“Are you talking about that video? That’s obviously fake. I’ve seen better special effects in Z-grade monster movies. It’s just an attempt by the locals to shut down construction.”

“It seems like a lot of effort,” I said.

“People in small towns like this will do anything to stand in the way of progress,” Dr. Finch said. “You can’t trust them.”

“So you’re not interested in checking it out?”

“Why waste time on an obvious hoax?” He asked. Without waiting for my answer he continued. “There are much more interesting things closer to the hotel. Like Bishop’s Corner.” I would have thought the Bishop’s Corner tour looked like an obvious hoax, but I wasn’t into cryptids.

“True,” I said. “There’s a nice hotel there. Did you consider staying in it?” Dr. Finch shuddered theatrically.

“Are you kidding? There’s catering to tourism, and then there’s mocking your visitors. That place crosses the line. They’re probably hoping someone will stumble in looking for Dracula.” So, in addition to drumming up business for an illegal tour, Dr. Finch was trying to sabotage the Whateley’s hotel. I wondered what the Dracula comment was supposed to be referring to. The Gates didn’t give off Transylvanian vibes at all. I would describe the outside as vaguely Dutch. Maybe Dr. Finch had London confused with the Netherlands?

“I thought the owner seemed quite hostile to tourists,” I said. “I practically needed to give references to get a room.”

“You’re staying there?”

“I am.” Dr. Finch looked perplexed.

“Well, it’s good to support local businesses, I suppose,” he said at last. “Is it cheap?”

“No. It makes up for the price with an attractive atmosphere, and I’ve slept well every night.”

“Hmmm. If there’s one thing I could use, it’s a good night’s sleep,” he admitted grudgingly. “The atmosphere may be appropriate, but none of these hotels have good mattresses.” My beer arrived.

“It’s been nice meeting you,” I said.

“Likewise. Think about that tour.”

“I will.”

Dr. Cassidy was still at the table when I got back.

“Do you know a Dr. Abe Finch?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “He started telling people I was crazy before I even confirmed my colleagues were missing. I think he’s jealous of my research.”

“Really? He said he wasn’t professionally interested.”

“Neither am I,” she said. “The IIC is a hobby of mine. I’m a Doctor of Philosophy most of the year. We’re professors at the same university, and our departments compete for funding. We’ve both taken the semester off to pursue our personal interests.”

“Did you know he went on the same tour as your companions?” I asked.

“Yes. He said the whole thing was rubbish.”

“He told
me
it was real.”

“I guess he’s up to something,” Zebulon said.

“No kidding,” Earl said. “Him and his cultist buddies. Dr. Cassidy, might I suggest a change in hotel tonight?”

“Why?” She asked.

“Just a precaution,” he said. “There are some shady people running around. It would be a shame if you vanished too.”

“Then you believe me?” she asked.

“Ma’am, I have been searching for your missing friends for days now,” Earl said. “Or at least for evidence that they existed. I promise you local law enforcement is on your side.” To our discomfort or at least mine, she started to cry.

“Thank God!” She said. “I didn’t know what to do. I can’t stay here forever looking for them, but I couldn’t give up. Some of them are just undergraduates who don’t even care about the project; they just wanted a chance to get out of Louisiana for a few weeks.”

Aha! That’s what her accent was: Cajun. I’d got so used to the Hollywood parody version I’d forgotten what the real thing sounded like. Maybe after this I’d look for work down there. If nothing else the weather would be nicer at this time of year. Speaking of which,

“They wanted to come here?” I said. “In October?”

“They’re college students,” she said. “The point was getting to travel for free, not the location.”

“It’s all right ma’am,” Earl said. “We’ll find out what’s going on. Thanks to you, now we have a little more to go on.”

“Do we stay here looking for more information, or do we call it a night and get this lady moved?” Zebulon asked. I looked at my watch.

“I vote for moving,” I said. “It’s getting awfully close to pumpkin time.”

Dr. Cassidy had a lot of luggage. Most of it was science related. In addition to her pseudoscience gadget, she had a whole workshop full of equipment to repair it crammed into her room. Jeremiah viewed it all with suspicion until we explained what it was for.

He made her leave the signal generator in her car, which was a relief to me because it weighed a significant fraction of a ton. I think all of her equipment was over fifty years old. Even her multimeter weighed five pounds. I no longer questioned whether or not she had lost her fellow researchers. There was no way one person had carried all that gear into her first hotel room unless that person had super powers.

Jeremiah gave her the warning about being settled by midnight. Zebulon said goodnight to us all and Earl settled into one of the armchairs in the lounge.

“I just want to see what develops,” he said when I asked him what he was doing. “We caused a real stir tonight.”

***

As I was preparing for bed, someone knocked on my door. It turned out to be Cassandra.

“Did you see the lights?” she asked me.

“Heading into the swamp?” I said. “It’s that tour, I’d imagine.”

“Then you’ve seen them before?”

“Every night.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“They’re all going to go into Bishop’s Corner, and only two of them are going to come back.” She stared down at me.

“And why hasn’t anything been done about it?”

“Why are you asking me?” I asked testily. “There’s a policeman right downstairs.”

“I know. Why isn’t he out there?”

“Because last night he went out there, and nothing happened. It’s too late for him to go out there now. Apart from the dangers of wandering through a swamp at night, he won’t be far enough from the hotel by curfew.”

“What does happen at midnight? The clerk was awfully stern about it.”

“We all get a good night’s sleep,” I said. “Look, could you please take one night to rest? You’ve made progress today. And besides, those people are going out there
expecting
something wild and dangerous. One of them might have enough sense to be prepared.”

She went, reluctantly. I made it to bed just in time to be sucked into the land of sleep.

***

I had another dream. I was standing at the base of a blueberry pie the size of a football stadium. There was a gate into the pie, and a banner over the gate announcing free turkey legs to the first eighteen thousand fans. I looked down, and I was wearing a t-shirt supporting blueberry pie. Sparks was wearing a little hat with a strawberry emblazoned on it. As we went into the pie, I realized that the gates were made of fresh corn on the cob. I was wondering why that seemed important when I woke up.

I was starving that morning. I showered and dressed as quickly as I could and went downstairs. I ignored the buffet and ordered waffles with strawberries and whipped cream. I was on my second plate when Steve walked in. He raised an eyebrow when he saw me.

“Did you have fun yesterday?” He asked.

“The shooting was fun,” I said. “Do you need me for something today?”

“Not really,” he said. “I heard that you picked up a damsel in distress last night.”

“Earl did,” I said. “Hey, do you dream of food when you sleep here?”

“No, I dream of other things. Is that why you’re eating so much?”

“Yes,” I said. “I was dreaming of pie.”

“Pie is good,” Steve said. “We’re still friends, right?” He sat down at the table with me.

“We’ll always be friends,” I said. “Even when you’re getting me shot at. Why?”

“I bought a house yesterday.”

“That’s sudden. Is it the house you’re renting?”

“No. It was an impulse buy.” Of course it was. Steve does many things, including buying property, impulsively. It usually works out for him. “I haven’t even been inside yet. I was hoping you could come with me to check it out.”

“You bought a house without even seeing the inside?” That was different. The outside of this house must be amazing. “Have I seen this house?”

“No,” he said. “You’ve driven past it several times though.” He sat down opposite me. “I paid twice what it was worth to get Mrs. Fry to sell me the late Obadiah Fry’s house and everything in it immediately.”

“What?!”

“That’s right; I own the mole man’s house. Want to come with me to look for clues?”

“Couldn’t you just break in like a normal amateur detective?”

“Nope. There’s a magical lock on the house. I don’t know who made it, but they’re good; only the rightful owner or someone who has permission from them can enter, even with a key. And as a representative of Jesticorps it would look bad if I got caught.” He leaned to the side and rested his head on his hand. “Besides, with all the time I’m going to be spending here it’s almost a worthwhile investment.”

“Sure it is.” With the mall delayed and probably finished, he wouldn’t have a reason to stay for long. He must have had another motive.

“If you come with me to check it out you can have your pick of any of the stuff that isn’t magical.”

“You’ve got a deal,” I said. Maybe there would be more pants. On the other hand - “Didn’t she sell most of his stuff?”

“We’re about to go find out.”

“Not without me you’re not,” Earl said, popping out of the basement. “There was more excitement last night. I’m sticking to you like glue until I find someone to arrest.”

“Or gun down in the hallway,” Jeremiah said. “Honestly, you could have ended the whole thing last night if you weren’t so quick to shoot.”

“I had no choice,” Earl said. “It was almost midnight.”

“You’re not going anywhere without me either,” Dr. Cassidy said. She looked better than she had last night. “There’s something terrible going on around here and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”

“And who are you?” Steve asked. I introduced them to each other. Neither seemed particularly impressed with the other.

“I doubt anyone will get to the bottom of this town,” he said. “But if you promise not to take or touch anything you can come along.”

***

Obadiah Fry had been one of Fiona’s neighbors. Compared to her immaculate house and garden, his looked derelict. The yard was overgrown at the edges, and the clear space around the house looked like it had been maintained with a weed whacker. It badly needed new paint, new trim, and a new roof.

“I can see why it was still on the market,” Dr. Cassidy said. “It’s a dump.”

It was built to the same scale as Fiona’s house. Earl and Steve had to duck to get through the doorways. Unlike Fiona’s, Obadiah’s house was at the front of his property, away from the cliff. Looking up I thought I could see one of the trees bordering Fiona’s property. It wasn’t as far away as I would have thought from the way the driveways were set up.

***

Obadiah had left a hoard behind. I would have to go back and ask Cecilia if she’d taken all the clothes she’d been offered because there were still plenty in the house. The only space to walk was a narrow path that meandered through every room. Based on the state of the carpet, that path had been expanded by whoever had packed up the clothes to sell. Fiona’s house was small but tidy. This house was downright claustrophobic. I had to turn sideways to get through the hallway. Earl was a thin guy, and he still had to keep a hand on the stacks to keep them from caving in on him as he squeezed through. The only bright spot was that none of the junk seemed to be organic. The house smelled musty, but not like garbage.

“No wonder the old man spent so much time in the streets,” Earl said. He lifted a stack of blankets to look underneath. “I’m surprised he didn’t get buried under all of this.”

“Maybe something in here will be a return on your investment,” I said to Steve.

“It would take a chest of real gold coins to offset the cost of all the garbage trucks I’m going to have to hire,” was his response. “So much for finding clues.”

“Maybe the rest of the house is less messy.” Even though the houses were built to the same scale, Fiona’s house had more rooms. That would be some consolation when it was time to clean.

“Why didn’t you warn us about this?” Earl asked, gesturing to the piles of stuff in the living room.

“I knew he collected things,” I said. “I didn’t know he hoarded them.” The specters hadn’t shown me much of the inside of this house. I got the impression that it hadn’t always been this bad.

“Did you know the previous owner?” Dr. Cassidy asked.

“No,” I said. “Some friends told me about him.”

“The kitchen’s clean!” Earl called out. “Well, it’s dusty, but there’s no garbage lying around.”

“He must have cooked in it,” Steve said.

“He was a healthy guy up until he had that heart attack,” Earl said. “He never married, so it makes sense that he could cook. Just not clean.”

As we continued to tour the house, a pattern began to develop. Some rooms were stacked high with clothes, bedding, garden tools that had never been used, light bulbs, batteries, textbooks, and less identifiable gadgets. Others would be almost empty.

“I guess Mrs. Fry packed up the clothes on the hangers to sell,” I said when the closet in the bedroom proved to be empty.

“Some of this might be valuable just because it’s old,” Steve said.

“Not the textbooks,” Dr. Cassidy told him. “I recognize the series and the current edition is almost identical. This one is worth something to me.” She pointed at the one she was interested in. “May I touch it?”

“Go ahead,” Steve said. She picked it up and started flipping through it.

“I can’t remember the last time I saw one this size. And with a detachable cover.”

“So that paisley pattern was supposed to be hidden?” I asked.

“Mmhmm. According to legend, this edition has an extra chapter of complete nonsense to satisfy the requirements for releasing a new edition.”

“That’s some exciting rumor mill,” Steve said. “Makes me wish I’d majored in philosophy.”

“Oh, shut up,” Cassandra said, irritated. “Hey, I’ve never seen these problems before. Maybe the legendary extra chapter is good after all. Are you selling these?” Steve shrugged.

“I did say Jaspar could have this stuff. You’ll have to ask him.”

“Why do you want an old logic book?” I asked.

“Solving logic problems is a hobby of mine,” she said. “We can find out what it’s worth online if you want.”

“You can have it as long as it doesn’t have a map to El Dorado hidden inside.” She grabbed it by the spine and shook it. As Steve and I stared in shock, nothing fell out.

“Now that’s a strong binding,” she said. “I guess it doesn’t have inserts.” She looked at us. “What? I meant it when I said old textbooks aren’t valuable. If you took this to a college bookstore, you’d be lucky to get a quarter for it.”

We found Obadiah’s workshop in the attic. Unlike Fiona’s, you needed a ladder to get into the attic of this house. The steps of the ladder were unusually wide. You could see that one side was more worn than the other. It must have been because of the wooden leg. The workroom wasn’t neat by anyone’s standards. Fortunately, it wasn’t as packed with junk as the other rooms in the house. The room was full of maps; piled on a table in the middle of the room, stacked on the floor, and crammed into shelves on the walls. Some of them were of the various pipes and power lines under the town; most of them were tunnels or plans for tunnels.

“There’s a copy of this at the station,” Earl said, stretching one out on the table in the middle of the room. “Ours is on dry erase paper so we can edit it.”

“Are they supposed to be ley lines?” Cassandra asked.

“No,” Steve said.

“None of the digging equipment is up here,” Earl noted.

“It wouldn’t be,” I said. “He’s not going to tunnel out of the attic. Maybe it’s in the basement.”

“It doesn’t look like any tunnels go under the house,” Steve said, looking at the map. “Most of these go under the streets.” He frowned. “Don’t you ever worry about that? I knew there would be one or two tunnels, but this shows as much tunnel as dirt.”

“They always seemed solid to me,” Earl said. “You’d have to be inside one to understand.”

“Wait, these are tunnels?” Cassandra said.

“Yes,” I told her. “The one we’re interested in isn’t on this map. All of these run underneath the town.”

“Maybe there’s another map,” Earl said. “If he wanted to keep a secret putting it on the town map wouldn’t be the best idea. He brought this map with him when he updated ours.”

“These are real tunnels?” Cassandra said.

“That’s right.”

“This is what’s been messing up our readings!” She exclaimed. “We thought these lines were a sign that the machine was broken!”

“That happened in an election once,” I said. “Some scientists made a computer program to predict the winner, and when it didn’t give them the answer they expected, they decided not to publicize the results. The computer was correct, but their public lack of faith in their machine set their program back for years.”

“I heard about that too,” Steve said. “Was it one of Franklin Roosevelt’s?”

“That would have been pathetic,” I said. “But no. I’m pretty sure it was before him. Or after. One of the two.”

“You’re saying I should have had more faith in my machine, is that it?” Cassandra said.

“All of these tunnels have exits,” I noted. “You could have followed one of the lines to the end. You know, I can’t remember which election it was. Now it’s going to bug me.”

“You could have tried digging,” Earl said. “Hitting concrete would have told you something.”

“You have no idea how much of a pain this machine is to use,” Cassandra said. “If I had to follow it for-” she traced a line with her finger- “three miles to verify its findings I’d go mad.”

“Aren’t there already machines that are better, then?” Steve asked. “I’m sure I’ve hired people who’ve used them and they had one in Jurassic Park. It was temperamental, but it only took a few seconds to use.”

“That one was for dinosaurs,” Cassandra said. “This one is for psychometric geological phenomenon. It’s completely different.”

“So, you’re testing a machine that searches for psychic rocks?” Earl asked.

“More or less,” Cassandra said.

“How useful do you expect this machine to be?” I asked her.

“Very,” she said. “Like I told you, it’s reliable in the lab. If we could get it working in the field, we could go to sites like Stonehenge and determine if the rocks themselves have psychic properties.”

I didn’t ask her any more questions. A machine that might be able to confirm the possibility of the presence of magic rocks did not sound useful to me. And while it was interesting that her machine had located the tunnels Obadiah and his predecessors seemed to have done the actual digging by hand, not with magic.

***

We searched the maps and journals for any trace of a tunnel out of town. There was a lot of stuff that would have interested a historian. In addition to digging new tunnels, Obadiah had spent time improving old tunnels or blocking them off. One of his journals mentioned tunnels that intersected with his, and hearing strange noises in the dark. Rather than investigate, he had begun lining the walls of his tunnels with concrete. I admire that sort of practical thinking. I also made a note to not go walking in the woods alone. I was also rethinking my position on owning a gun.

“Shouldn’t there be older stuff here?” Steve asked after an hour or so of rifling through documents didn’t reveal any new information. “If tunnel digging runs in this guy’s family there should be maps and journals older than Obadiah.”

“Maybe the sister-in-law thought they were valuable and took them,” I said.