Ghosts Beneath Us: A Third Spookie Town Murder Mystery (Spookie Town Murder Mysteries Book 3) (12 page)

Tina’s dwelling was a ranch style house with dull siding, the shade of country blue that had been popular about twenty years before. It was a modest house, but it and its grounds were well tended and there were flowers sprouting everywhere because spring had at last arrived.

Myrtle knew where Tina kept her hidden key and after digging it out from under the flat frog rock, she unlocked the door and, not bothering to announce her entrance, barged in.

“Tina! You here? Tina!”

Inside, the house was silent and dark. It was a small structure with square rooms and sparse furnishings. There were large windows and brightly colored pictures on the wall. It was very tidy.

“Myrtle! Hold on a minute,” Frank shouted after her. But the old lady was already gone, rooms ahead of him, yelling out for her friend Tina. He found her in a bedroom at the rear of the house, sitting on a bed covered in a gaudy quilt.

“She’s not here.” Myrtle’s voice verged on despair. “I’ve been through the entire house and she’s not anywhere; hasn’t been here by the looks of it, either. No suitcases. Her purse isn’t here and I know she wouldn’t go anywhere without it. It was with her when she left the lounge last night.” She looked like she was going to cry and he’d never seen the tough old bird cry.

Feeling awful for her, Frank put his arm around her birdlike shoulders. “I’m sorry, Myrtle. I know you were hoping she was here.”

“I was praying,” she whispered, gazing up at him, “and I’m not a praying woman.” She rose from the bed and, after looking in the closet, hobbled into the living room where she collapsed on the couch. He sat down beside her.

“You know,” she said looking around, “if you don’t mind, Frank, I’d like to stay here instead of with you. Just for a short time. Just in case she comes home? That way I’ll be here to greet her. You don’t mind, do you?”

“No, no.” He patted her hand understandingly. “You do what you want. Think about it first, though. We’ll run back to my house and collect your suitcases before we meet the sheriff at your place and afterwards I’ll drop you off here before I go home. But if you decide to stay here, I’d like you to keep in close touch with me. Call me if anything unusual happens or if you feel threatened in any way.”

“Ah,” her face lit up with comprehension, “because you don’t think the fire at my house was an accident, do you? Or Tina’s vanishing act?”

“I don’t. Not with what’s been going on around here the last few weeks.”

“It’s all part of the same story, ain’t it?”

“It could be. And Tina’s disappearance feeds right into my suspicions if you answer me the way I think you’re going to answer me.”

“About what?”

“Lately, did Tina mention anything about having any trouble here at the house? Were there any random acts of property defacement or strange incidents that had occurred? Anything that had frightened or unsettled her?”

Myrtle’s face scrunched up in thought. “Now that you ask there was something. She said to me last week before we got on the boat she was happy to be leaving her house behind for a bit–something about hearing disturbances at night outside her windows and things going missing. She was afraid she was losing her mind and hoped the cruise would set her right again.

“Humph, she was dead wrong about that.”

Frank took that moment to leave the couch. “Stay here, would you? I’m going to check out something. Be right back.”

The basement. Frank found the door and descended into the lower level of the house, peered around, yet nothing seemed out of the ordinary. It was as neat as the upper floors, everything on shelves or in boxes. Everything in its place. No mess. He hadn’t expected that, but after he thought about it more, it made sense. Tina had been taken care of in a different way, after all, hadn’t she? Her house was untouched because she was no longer in it.

They got in his truck and drove back to his cabin where he got Myrtle’s suitcases and then they went on to her place, or what was left of it. “How about you, Myrtle? Besides your trailer being burned has anything else out of the ordinary happened recently? Anything?”

“You mean my trailer being torched isn’t out of the ordinary enough?” She was sitting in the seat next to him, her arms crossed over her chest and her eyes on the trees and fields speeding past them. Clearing her throat, she continued, “I’ve been thinking about that myself since you asked me the same thing about Tina.”

She was silent for a moment.

“Well?” he probed further.

“Only thing I can think of is…well…I’ve had someone pestering me on the telephone a lot wanting to know if I’d sell my trailer and land. Sometimes it’s a woman and sometimes it’s a man. They’ve been persistent as hell. First time or two I listened and told them emphatically no…now when they call I just scream in the phone or hang up hard. I hate people bothering me on the phone like that.” Her lips twitched up into a devilish grin. “They still keep trying, though. Usually when someone calls about buying my ten acres I only have to say no once and they leave me alone.”

“You’re a hard woman, Myrtle.” To himself he thought the admission was right on point. “You get offers for your land often?”

“I have. Some over the years. I’ll never sell. Not even now. It was the land my husband bought when we married and I plan to die on it, too. It has so many memories for me.”

They’d pulled into Myrtle’s driveway in front of her now scorched trailer. Wisps of smoke rose from the smoldering shell and the overpowering scent of burnt wood and metal was everywhere. There was also the strong stink of gasoline. Frank estimated the fire had been set sometime the day before. It was odd no one had reported it.

“Your trailer is gone. It’s not livable at all. What are you going to do now?” Frank stared at what was left of it and then his eyes roamed the surrounding woods. Everything looked okay. No one lurking behind the trees spying on them. No one anywhere. The birds were in full voice among the leaves and they would have been squawking if there had been humans in the forest. 

“I’ve been thinking on that. I’m going to go pick out one of those modular homes, buy it and have it hauled out here and put up. I’d like something larger, newer and prettier, than what I had before. I needed more space, and that trailer was too small anyway. Insurance should pay for most of it and I’ll cough up the rest.”

“Sounds like you know what you want.”

“I do. I want to stay living here.”

Myrtle got out of the truck and limped over to the trailer’s steps that were still attached to the porch. Frank caught up to her and, putting out an arm to block her, had to keep her from going inside. “It’s too dangerous in there Myrtle. You just have to accept whatever was in there–your furniture, clothes and personal items–aren’t worth salvaging. I’m sorry.”

“So am I. But don’t feel bad for me, friend, I always bounce back. A trailer is just a trailer. Material possessions are just things and I still have my memories. Right now I’m more distressed by Beatrice’s problems and Tina’s disappearance. People are more important that things.”

“That they are, Myrtle.” He was anxious to pay a visit to the ship, after he talked to someone at the cruise line to obtain permission, poke around some and interrogate the captain. The boat wouldn’t pull out of port again for a day or two while cleanup was going on, and until the next passengers boarded, so he had time.

They sat in his truck and waited until the sheriff’s squad car drove up. They didn’t have to wait long.

As usual Sheriff Mearl was courteous but unhelpful. So an old lady’s beat up trailer had accidently burned down? In his mind there was nothing criminal about that. It wasn’t worth much. The whole town thought of it as an eyesore anyway. Good riddance. “Probably bad wiring or you left something on. You were gone a whole damn week, Myrtle,” the officer reminded her. “You have insurance?”

“Yeah.” The old woman was glaring at the cop. They had history. She didn’t like him much and never had and he felt the same way about her. He thought she was a public nuisance, thought she was half a sandwich shy of a picnic. It didn’t help that Myrtle let him keep believing it by some of her bizarre actions. She enjoyed tormenting him.

“Then you’re covered. No harm, no foul. It was falling apart anyway. Now your insurance will give you a brand shiny new one. And all the trash you had around it? It just saved you a lot of work and the trouble of getting a monster-sized dumpster.”

Myrtle stomped off without answering him.

Frank made it a point to draw the sheriff aside and inform him about the other local disturbances and that he believed they were all connected in some way.

“You need to bulk up the patrols out here, sheriff. Possibly do nighttime stakeouts to catch whoever is terrorizing these old people.”

“Now Frank, you and I both know it’s probably only a bunch of bored teenagers doing their mischief at the old one’s expense. It happens all the time.”

“You believe it’s only mischief? It’s a lot more than that, Mearl. Property has been destroyed and elderly citizens have been terrorized and I don’t think it’s going to stop there. Mark my words.”

“That’s your take on this situation, Frank, but this is police business, not yours. Not anymore anyway. You’re retired, remember? I advise you to stay out of it and let us handle it.” The sheriff’s glance was stern. Frank was tired of the man reminding him he was retired. Frank knew that. He couldn’t help it he was always being sucked into the mysteries of the town and it was in his nature to solve them.

Frank could have argued with the man, but the two, like him and Myrtle, had never seen eye to eye much, either, so he let it go. No matter what he said the cop would go his own clueless way, like a blind cow in the middle of a highway. He always did.

When the cop left Frank drove Myrtle to Tina’s. “You sure you want to stay here? It might be better if you were someplace safer. Like my house.”

“Sure, I’m staying. I’m waiting for Tina. And, hey, my home was already burned up, what else can they do to me? Besides, the ghosts are everywhere. I can’t escape them. Could be they set the fire. I wouldn’t put it past them. Some of them are spiteful little creatures. So one place is as good as another. I ain’t afraid of no ghosts!”

Frank almost laughed at Myrtle’s eternal spunkiness. “If you have any problems, any at all, telephone me, you hear? And I’ll be right over.”

“I know that Frank. You go on home now and get ready for your night with Abigail and the kids. Go. Shoo.”

And Frank went.

*****

At three o’clock Frank picked up Abigail, Laura and Nick and drove them to Sheila’s house for the reunion. All the brothers and sisters had made it. The evening was fun, the food everyone had prepared was wonderful, and it was heart-warming to see the children together. Frank knew these gatherings helped assuage the guilt Abigail had over not being able to take all six under-aged Brooks children when their parents died. The other four children had been split up between the extended family, while Giles, the oldest at nineteen, had joined the army the year before.

At Shelia’s Frank watched Laura and Nick interacting with their siblings, laughing and catching up on each other’s lives. It was a lovely evening. It always was when the children were together. Because they lived apart, they rarely fought among themselves, had few of the usual sibling rivalries and were happy to see each other.

Later on in the evening he and Abigail stole some time alone, sitting on Shelia’s covered deck as a spring rain drizzled in the darkness. Behind them they could hear the adults’ voices conversing and the kids’ giggling.

Frank caught her up on Myrtle’s troubles, about her trailer burning down and Tina’s vanishing act.

“You waited until now to tell me all this?” she exclaimed, her eyes on him. The deck was surrounded in solar lights, casting a soft glow. Shelia had a nice house. It was small but comfortable, and filled with love.

“I didn’t want to discuss it in front of the kids and didn’t want to disrupt the evening. There wasn’t anything you could have done anyway.”

“Poor Myrtle. I’ll have to go over and see her tomorrow. I only wish she would have stayed with you instead of camping out at Tina’s. She must be so distraught after everything and with her friend missing.”

“You know Myrtle, she pretends nothing fazes her, but we both know better. I also feel sorry for her. Losing her home, her collection of treasures stockpiled around it, and her friend at the same time, must be hard.”

“Someone also set fire to her
treasures
?”

“Uh, huh.”

“That’s low. She’s spent years gathering those things and the loss of them must hurt her,” Abigail said. “Have you called the cruise line or spoken to the ship’s captain yet?”

“I called earlier today and got the runaround. About what I expected. I’m going down to the ship tomorrow and have a look for myself before it leaves port the day after.”

“You’re searching for any overlooked clues to Tina’s disappearance, huh?”

“I’m going to try. All these random things happening to our people in town scare me.”

“Why?”

“All the people who have been affected are elderly and all are within a ten mile radius of each other.”

“That’s interesting, but where it ties into these incidents, I can’t see.”

“Yet, but you will. It’s a pattern and I have one or two suspicions to what might be going on. Only time will tell if I’m right. I have a hunch the last pieces of the puzzle won’t be long falling into place, either. Events seem to be escalating.” Frank sighed, rose from his chair and strode to the edge of the deck to study the night. An owl was hooting somewhere and, far in the distance, dogs were barking. The evening, with the rain, was cool but not chilly as it’d been the last few nights.

That’s when his cell phone rang. He unhooked it from his belt and answered it. “Myrtle?” A pause. “Slow down. What’s wrong?” Another longer pause. “All right. Abby and I are still at Sheila’s but we can be back there within three hours if we leave now. Okay.” He flipped his phone shut, reattached it to his belt and turned around.

“I heard. Myrtle, huh? What’s wrong now?”