Black Raven Inn: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 6) (10 page)

“
S
o she wants you to help her find
the man she used to sing with?” Matt asked with his usual blend of skepticism and healthy dose of cerebral curiosity. “As in his ghost?”

Taryn rooted around in her plastic tub for her box of charcoals while she balanced her phone on her shoulder. “Well, he was more than that but basically, yeah. She thinks I can help and I’ll be more discreet than a run-of-the-mill psychic or ghost hunter. She thinks I am a conduit to these things.”

“Well, you
are
…” Matt pointed out.

Taryn shrugged. It wasn’t really her that was the conduit, it was Miss Dixie. They were kind of a team.

“Anyway, she also gets a painting out of it from me so I guess her money goes further.”

“And you’re not going to run to a tabloid or anything,” Matt agreed.

“Right.”

Now that she was set up with her folding chair, charcoals, and sketch pad she made herself comfortable. The lobby was still dreary, but she thought her eyes were starting to adjust to the gloom.

“So what are you supposed to do if his ghost pays you a visit?” Matt teased her. “Tell him to stay right there while you call her and she hightails it over to the motel?”

Taryn laughed and then felt a little guilty. Well, it was kind of funny. “She’s hoping I capture some things on film. I don’t know that she actually wants to be here.”

“So the one picture wasn’t enough?”

“Not for some people.” Taryn frowned. “When you’ve lost someone, you want as much of them as you can get. I told her I couldn’t make any promises but that I’d do what I could. That means I’m going to have to spend an awful lot of time in that room.”

“Taryn?” Matt’s voice grew serious again, a sign he was putting a lot of thought into what he was about to say. “Are you sure this is good for you? Getting lost in the past like that again? Each time you do it, it takes a little more out of you…”

“Matt,” Taryn replied with the same patience she once used when he was arguing the logic, or illogic, of her favorite Saturday morning cartoons as children. “This is what I am supposed to do. This is why I’m here. I don’t always like it but running from it doesn’t help. It just so happens that this is the first time I’ve actually been
paid
to do it.”

“Okay,” Matt said in return, but she didn’t have to hear it in his voice to know he wasn’t convinced; she could all but feel his hesitancy through the miles between them. “Just one more question.”

“What?”

“How on earth are you going to make your paintings reflect the hotel in a positive light? I mean you’re good but are you really that good?”

Taryn busted in laughter. The booming sound echoed through the dark, stuffy space until it was almost radiant.

It
took
Taryn more than three hours to sketch the lobby to her satisfaction. For now, her sketch represented the space as it was. Once she began painting she’d wave her magic wand and take it back to a better, gentler time when it was at least clean and new, if not sparkling and beautiful.

She planned on doing a lot of research in order to locate photographs of it from the 1950s and 1960s, although most of the work would stem from her own imagination.

Taryn had worked with a lot less; she’d recreated houses that been almost totally demolished in fires, without any pictures or original artwork to work from.

Matt was right, though. This was a challenge of a different kind. In the majority of her jobs, the structures she recreated had once been beautiful and stately, if not grand. The Black Raven Inn had never been beautiful by any stretch of the imagination. She could make it look authentic and true to its original construction, though. Perhaps slightly better without totally embellishing the design.

“You turning in for the day?” Aker asked in a tone that was casually polite, it not completely friendly yet.

“Yep! It’s getting late and my tummy is growling. You have a nice day?” She was bound and determined to win him over. Eventually.

“It was quiet. That’s all I ask for,” he replied with resolve.

Taryn imagined that he had seen a lot in his day; his present job must have been downright boring. Other than the rat (which he knew about) and the hand on her shoulder in Room #5 (which he
didn’t
know about) nothing had caused any excitement in the time they’d been on the job. All he had to do was unlock the gates, search the perimeter and interior before she started work, and sit out in the sun all day while she did her thing. It wasn’t exactly life on the beat.

“Let’s start early again tomorrow, okay?” she asked as they began packing up their respective vehicles. “I need to catch that morning light so that I can see in there.”

“Early is fine with me,” he replied, adjusting his dark sunglasses and brushing a speck of invisible lint from his jacket.

“And, uh, by ‘early’ I mean–“

“Nothing before 10:00 am,” he finished for her. “I know the drill.”

Taryn grinned. In a weird way, it was almost like having a partner.

The pale moon was already sharing the sky with the sinking sun when Taryn drove back towards Hillsboro Village and her apartment. After a drive through White Castle, she took a turn down Music Row, blowing on her hot fries as she cruised past the signs congratulating songwriters on their latest hits.

“So depressing,” she murmured.

She was saddened to see that so many of the bungalows and buildings that had once housed publishing companies and record labels were empty. Growing up, Music Row had been a thriving area, full of professional offices for the music business. Now, many of the companies had either closed or been bought up by larger companies or relocated to newer buildings closer to downtown. Some had moved to Los Angeles. The little shopping area off of Demonbruen that was once home to a Barbara Mandrell museum and George Jones gift shop was now a virtual ghost town. Even Shoney’s was gone.

On the other hand, downtown was booming. As a child it was virtually empty. Her own grandmother had once remarked that you couldn’t get her to “drive through downtown in the broad daylight.” As a teenager, she’d watched as Second Avenue enjoyed a revival, what with the line dance craze and building of the Wild Horse Saloon and Hard Rock Café. Broadway, Second, and Printer’s Alley weren’t just places for liquor and live music–now you could hardly walk down any of them on a weekend without bumping into families with camera and toddlers in tow.

Taryn’s own neighborhood in Hillsboro Village had seen its fair share of changes, too. When she’d first moved in the main draw had been a used bookstore and the Pancake Pantry. The Pancake Pantry was the size of her living room back then, and the lines stretched around the block if you didn’t know what time to go. Now there were more than two dozen boutiques and cafes. The old Belcourt Theatre had been revitalized and showed arthouse films, and the whole area was teeming with hipsters and industry professionals alike.

Ironically, the Pancake Pantry had expanded and was now three times larger than it had been–and the lines
still
wrapped around the building.

Things changed. Taryn wasn’t really that keen on changes.

Although she’d spent most of her childhood in Franklin, Nashville was still her “hometown” but while she could appreciate the economic growth the city had seen, it no longer felt like
hers
anymore. She’d always kind of liked the grittiness and blue collar worker meets old southern money feel the city had kept. She liked the fact that she could go to the Green Hills Mall and walk through the shops with fur coats, pretending she had money, while still cruise Broadway and see struggling musicians standing on the street corners with their guitar cases open for change. Now there was a glossiness to all of it, a Hollywood finish that made it all feel like a replica of something else.

It was still her favorite city, though. It was hard to imagine living anywhere else.

As Taryn turned into her parking spot, she groaned with soreness. It had been a long day.

Her building was old and rambling. It creaked and moaned with every stiff breeze and there were smells inside that grew worse with each passing year. But from her bedroom window she could see the Nashville skyline with the Batman building’s ears poking up and at night the lights of the city shone through  and sprinkled her floors, making her feel less alone.

That part of Nashville was still hers.

Someone was playing the guitar outside. He could hear the music drift through the thick, rancid air and find its way inside the cramped room where it wrapped itself around him. He was hot and sticky and the stench was making him sick to his stomach but the sound of the music was pure and clean. It cleansed him as it washed over him and, for a moment, he felt unsoiled and alive again.

The moment ended when the musician stopped and the music abruptly departed, leaving him alone and empty again.

His legs jerked, rising briefly from the slick bedspread; he could feel the miniscule insects crawling over them even if he couldn’t
see
them. In panic, he looked around the room, trying to find something heavy enough to place on them so that they’d stop twitching. He’d have given anything to have someone sit or lay on them–some kind of weight to keep them grounded.

Sweat rolled from his forehead in droplets that pooled under his neck. The pounding in his head was relentless. Moaning, he raked his hands through his wild hair and turned to his side, bringing his knees up to his stomach. A few years before he’d eaten some bad chicken and ended up in the hospital with salmonella. He was sicker than a dog and thought he might die.

This was worse.

While the pain and sickness was bad, though, it was his mind anguished him the most. Heart beating wildly, thoughts a jumbled mess, panic swelling in his stomach–he felt like that moment in a dream when you’re falling and are just about to hit the bottom. Only the sensation never ended.

The phone on the nightstand next to him rang, the shrill sound filling the room and making his legs jump again. He looked at it and considered it but then closed his eyes. The mere thought of lifting the receiver, of talking into it, of trying to form a sentence… It was all too much.

He was a failure. A complete failure. His mother, before she hung herself in the bathroom on the day before his eighteenth birthday, had told him that he wouldn’t amount to anything and she’d been right. He’d failed at everything he had tried. He couldn’t handle the world, couldn’t handle making decisions, couldn’t handle living. It was all too much.

Even the thought of
her
, with her decency and sweet smile and angelic voice was painful. She’d be sickened to see what he
really
was inside, to see what was happening to him. He’d fooled her, fooled everyone, for awhile. But this, him writhing on the bed with a puddle of vomit in the floor, was the real him. They’d all see that soon enough.

He had to do something before they did.