That Old Flame of Mine (27 page)

He laughed. “I wish you were permanent here, Stella. You would give old Ben Carson a run for his money. I’d like to see it.”

The door to the cabin was open as usual. Stella did her best to make it look like she’d opened it, but it was kind of obvious she hadn’t. Even more odd was the coffeepot already brewing on the counter. She didn’t know how to explain that. Maybe she could say she had a timer that was set for whenever she pulled up.

Walt looked around the cabin as she sorted through her options while taking down coffee mugs from the antlers. “You know, you don’t have to pretend with me, Stella. I know this place is haunted. Before the town took it over, I used to come up here all the time. I felt closer to Eric. It’s still his place, isn’t it?”

“I guess so.” She was relieved not to have to come up with an explanation. “I didn’t know what was going on at first. Things moved around all the time. Lights came on, and the alarm didn’t seem to work. Then one night he talked to me.”

Walt stared at her. “Talked to you? You can
hear
him?”

Stella cleared her throat. Maybe she had crossed some line of believability. Maybe now he thought she’d lost it. “The house makes sounds. Sometimes I think I hear voices.”

“Coward,” Eric said. “You don’t have to worry. He can handle it.”

“Oh.” Walt started walking around the living room. “Is he here now? Can you talk to him now?”

She wasn’t sure what to say. She finished making the coffee and handed Walt a cup. “I don’t know. Eric says you can handle it. Can you?”

Walt started laughing so hard he had to put down the cup. “Are you kidding me? What I wouldn’t give to talk to my old friend. Eric? You son of a gun! After all these years, you’re still here.”

Eric was laughing too. “Tell him it’s good to see him again too and that I appreciated his visits after I died.”

Stella told Walt what Eric had said. She was uneasy about this whole medium-type role she’d suddenly been pushed into. She sipped her Coke and waited.

“I can’t tell you how much it means to know he’s okay,” Walt said. “So this is what happens to you when you die, huh? What about me? My place is burned out. What will happen to me when I die?”

“Tell him he’d better get busy rebuilding,” Eric said. “Then he has to be ready to get rid of squatters who want to take up his space.”

Walt laughed again when Stella relayed the message. “So that’s why no one has been able to live here. Except for you, Chief. Why are
you
different?”

“He said it’s because I can hear him and I’m rebuilding his fire brigade,” she explained. “We had a few problems to begin with, but it’s better than snakes in the wiring.”

“I’ll bet you’ve had some problems.” Walt sobered when he looked at her. “First of all, you’re a fine-looking woman. Eric always liked the ladies.”

“He’s just jealous,” Eric said.

“Second of all, you’re a Carson and he never cared for the old man.”

“I haven’t had that problem with him,” Stella said. “I have with a few others.”

Walt sipped his coffee and shook his head. “Wish we had something a little stronger. This will have to do for now. Eric, I’m glad you’re here. You’re the only other soul who might realize the truth about Adam Presley’s death. I think Tory had half an idea. The problem was none of us could put it all together. Until now. I think I get it now.”

“Go ahead, Walt,” Eric said.

Stella didn’t relay the message. Walt got up and faced the fireplace. “It wasn’t Adam that died that night.”

Chapter 32

“W
hat makes you say that?” Stella asked. Was this what Tory was looking for?

“Eric and I examined the body,” Walt explained. “The dead man was wearing Adam’s clothes and shoes. He was the same approximate height and weight as Adam. The man’s face and midsection were mostly gone. You know the kind of destruction I’m talking about.”

“Yes. I do. What was it that made you suspicious? Obviously it wasn’t something that struck everyone else like it did you.”

He ran his hand around his neck. “We were uneasy with the circumstances. I mean, a man doesn’t spill lighter fluid all over himself and not get up and change clothes. He especially doesn’t sit there and light up after he does it, then lose the lighter.”

“You signed off on the investigation,” she reminded him. “You and Eric both said it was an accidental death.”

“You don’t understand the circumstances surrounding the death,” Eric said. “I couldn’t even remember until right now.”

“It was the circumstances.” Walt echoed what Eric had said to Stella. “It was two days before the festival. The old man didn’t want us dragging it around while the visitors were here. He said it was too expensive for the town to keep investigating. Eric and I argued until we were blue in the face. The mayor threatened to fire both of us. In the end, it was what Ben Carson wanted.”

Stella thought it over and shook her head. “I guess I understand why he wanted you to stop, Walt. It’s not much to go on. An expensive investigation, especially at that time, based solely on Adam Presley’s reaction to spilling lighter fluid on himself, isn’t very conclusive. What if he was smoking first? He was half-asleep and spilled the lighter fluid. He might not have even been aware of it happening.”

“Let him finish,” Eric said. “There’s more. It takes him forever to get it all out.”

“There’s more,” Walt echoed again. “Eric noticed that Adam was wearing his expensive watch that he was so proud of. One of the car manufacturers gave it to him for top sales or some such. We’d all seen it a million times. He was also wearing his wedding band—”

“His diamond high school ring was gone.” Eric finished before Walt could. Their words came almost at the same time. “I remember now!”

“Adam loved that ring,” Walt said. “He never took it off. We couldn’t prove it since there wasn’t enough skin left on his finger to see if there was a white band where it should’ve been. The coroner actually argued that the ring had melted. No one ever found the ring—or the metal either.”

“People take things that matter to them out of their houses before they set them on fire for the insurance money,” Eric said.

“I know,” she answered him. She looked at Walt. “Eric reminded me about people not wanting to lose their important things when they torch their houses.”

“Exactly,” Walt shouted. “You’ve still got it going on, buddy.”

It was funny watching Walt dance around the living room, pumping his fists into the air and staring at the ceiling.

“Tory noticed too, but the old man told the DA it wasn’t enough to investigate, and the DA agreed.” Eric sounded like he was right beside her. Stella jumped, and he laughed at her.
Too much caffeine.

“Was he telling you that everything else was perfect?” Walt stopped his victory dance. “There was only that flaw and some testimony from Tory and her friends that Adam had stopped smoking months before.”

“Tory also said that it was the wrong type of cigarette,” Stella added. “It sounds like it was worth looking into with that extra evidence.”

“You haven’t been here long enough to really cross the old man or see him in action with someone else,” Eric explained. “When he shuts something down, it stays down. Like the investigation into your grandmother’s death.”

Stella watched Walt finish his coffee. She’d heard so much about this. “Was there something odd, beyond the tragedy, about my grandmother’s death at the estate?”

“Not according to Ben Carson.” Walt sat down heavily on the chair. “I guess Eric told you about that, huh? I wish I could hear him too. I wonder why you can.”

“I don’t know,” Stella said. “What about Abigail Carson?”

“Another case of no proof. Some of the people who worked at the estate said Ben and Abigail were arguing right before she fell down the stairs.”

“Including my mother.” Stella wondered if anyone knew the truth. “She told me she found out later that Ben had left and was working at the pepper plant when it happened.”

Walt shrugged. “If he was, nobody saw him there but the old manager, Shu Carriker. He swore up and down that the old man was at the plant taking apart a broken machine.”

Stella took a deep breath.
Jack’s father. The one John said had once been Ben’s go-to man.
“He counts, right?”

“He did,” Eric agreed. “Before he took off for places unknown right after. No one ever saw him again, which meant no one could follow up.”

“Not that this isn’t interesting.” Stella tried to get back on topic. “Right now, I guess we need to stick with what happened to Adam Presley and whether that had any impact on Tory’s death.”

“I think it’s obvious,” Walt said. “The man killed in the fire on Second Street
wasn’t
Adam Presley. I believe now that Adam set that fire up to cover him getting away from Tory. He probably left town. He had to get away from the butt-kicking he knew her father would give him for making her look bad, even if she was unfaithful.”

“I thought this afternoon that either Tagger or Greg Lambert might have killed Adam. It had taken Tory all these years to gather enough evidence to make her dangerous. What if Adam is back?” Stella asked. “What if he didn’t like Tory continuing to try and prove it wasn’t him that died in that fire? He went to a lot of trouble to disappear.”

“I suppose that’s possible,” Eric said. “Although it seems like folks would know him right away. He grew up here.”

“If he’s back, no one might recognize him after all these years.” Walt grinned and looked at the ceiling. “I bet I look a lot different now than I did when you passed.”

“He looks the same to me,” Eric said. “Older, yes. I would’ve still known him.”

“What does Eric look like now?” Walt wondered.

Stella admitted that she hadn’t actually seen him. “I think it may be more difficult to see a ghost than to hear one. Adam could also have had plastic surgery. Don’t forget, he had to be looking over his shoulder for the last forty years. He probably doesn’t look like he did at all.”

“Well, that scares the bejesus out of me,” Walt said. “If this is true, it could explain the fire at my place. Heck, maybe it even explains who ran you off the road, Stella. Tory left you to walk around asking questions about Adam’s death all over town. Maybe that got him riled up.”

“He could be right,” Eric said. “Not sure how we could prove any of this.”

“Eric isn’t sure how we can prove it.” Stella got to her feet and walked to the big windows that overlooked the deck.

“I don’t know if we should try,” Walt said. “I’m retired and homeless. Eric is dead. It could be bad for you, Stella. Are you sure you want to press your luck with this?”

“Maybe there’s a way to trap him into giving himself away,” Stella continued, caught up in the idea. “I’d like to leave Sweet Pepper knowing this was resolved.”

Walt seemed to weigh his involvement in the project. “I was too scared of my position when Adam died. I thought about it last night. I don’t have much to lose now. What the heck?”

Stella outlined her plan to flush Adam Presley out into the open. Adam’s father was still alive. She thought they might be able to use him to help locate Adam. It was a long shot, but Walt agreed that it could work.

* * * 

Together, she and Walt got everything together that they’d need over the next few days. Technically, Stella would have been required to have Don Rogers’s approval to approach Adam Presley’s father about exhuming his son’s body. She was banking on the fact that Adam’s father wouldn’t know that.

If he did, and spoke to Chief Rogers, the worst that could happen would be that the police chief would be angry when he found out. Since he was angry all the time anyway, she decided to go ahead with her plan without consulting him.

When everything was in place, Stella and Walt knocked on Joe Presley’s front door. It was the day before the festival. The little white house he lived in seemed barely big enough for a person. It was more like a child’s playhouse.

Joe came to the door, leaning heavily on his walker. He looked every year of his ninety-two birthdays. He’d once been a warehouse manager at the pepper plant and had taken care of his wife and son on that salary for many years.

“Yes?”

“Joe? It’s Walt Fenway. Remember me?”

Lucky for them, Joe not only remembered Walt, he also thought he was still the police chief.

“We need to exhume your son’s body,” Stella explained after telling him who she was.

Joe looked confused. “Where’s that other fella who took care of the fires?”

“Eric Gamlyn? He retired,” Walt said. “Chief Griffin is taking his place.”

“What is it you want Adam for?” Joe asked.

“We need to talk to you about him,” Walt said.

Had Joe forgotten that Adam was dead? Stella wondered.

“Oh. Well, I haven’t heard from him for a few years, not since his mama died in 1992.” Joe scratched his head, still not understanding.

Stella and Walt exchanged hopeful looks.
That’s a surprise
. Maybe they were on the right trail.

“Has Adam sent you anything lately? Checks? Letters?” Walt asked him.

Joe shook his head. “Not in years, sir. He tries to do what’s right. He sent his mama a postcard right before she died. It’s from California. Imagine going all that way. No one else in our family has ever gone that far from Sweet Pepper.”

They went back inside with Joe, who sat down in a ragged chair near the TV.

Stella hadn’t been expecting this. She thought they’d have the old man sign the fake document and that would be it. They could take it to the newspaper and pretend they were going to exhume Adam’s body. That was supposed to bring Adam out to stop them from finding out that he wasn’t in his coffin.

She hadn’t thought that Joe knew his son was alive. “Do you have the postcard, Mr. Presley?”

“Sure. I’ll show you.” Joe got to his feet with great difficulty.

Stella and Walt watched the man hobble into the next room.

“Can we use that as proof that Adam is still alive?” Stella whispered.

“Possibly. All depends on when it’s from and if someone believes it.”

“You mean Chief Rogers.”

“We’d need him to present it to the DA. And we couldn’t have worse timing. No one is gonna want to know about this during the festival. It’s like the last time.”

Stella knew he was right. Maybe the timing was bad, but as Walt and Eric had admitted, if they’d continued pushing the last time, Tory might still be alive.

She looked around the tiny living room, barely big enough for a TV and a chair. The kitchen area looked the same, with a miniature stove, refrigerator, and sink. That left a small bedroom where Joe had gone for the postcard, and a closet-sized bathroom.

She thought her apartment back home was small.

“He must not remember that Adam supposedly died in the fire all those years ago.”

“Or Adam told his parents he was moving on and they never said anything,” Walt replied. “It happens. Nobody keeps your secrets better than family.”

“Or turns you in faster, for your own good,” she quipped.

“Yeah.” He smiled. “One way or the other.”

Joe slowly returned with the postcard in his hand. “See? He was visiting the orange groves in California when his mama took sick and passed. He couldn’t come home for the funeral. His mama would’ve understood. She didn’t want him to live with that woman a minute longer than he had to. She was eating him alive.”

Stella realized they had at least the start of an explanation as to why Adam had decided to fake his own death. There were a lot more questions—the biggest one being, where had he found a dead man to take his place for the fire?

She and Walt looked at the faded postcard. It was dated March 1992.

“Guess he was alive then,” Walt muttered. “Damn Ben Carson. I knew we should’ve pushed harder.”

“Never mind.” She handed the postcard back to Joe. “You still have a chance to set it right.”

They both thanked Joe for his help.

“You’re entirely welcome,” he replied. “If you see my son, would you tell him I wish he’d stop in. I’m not so young anymore. I’d like to see him one more time before I join my Lula.”

Walt put his hand on the confused old man’s shoulder. When he spoke, his voice was ragged. “If I see him, sir, I’ll be sure to tell him he should visit you. I’ll do my best to get him here.”

They walked out of the tiny house together. Stella felt guilty getting the information from the old man who couldn’t even recall that his son was supposed to be dead.

“That was awful.” She rested her hands on the steering wheel.

“Never mind.” Walt slammed his door shut. “We did what we had to do and it worked—at least the part about finding out that Adam didn’t die in the fire. Now what? The plan was to go to the
Gazette
and scare Adam out when he saw in the paper that we were going to exhume him. Now I’d be afraid Adam might go after the Smittys if they say they have a postcard that proves he’s alive. We need to find out who he is.”