A Séance in Franklin Gothic

by Jessa Archer

  “Those are the Davenports,” Wren said. “Elijah is the younger one. Abel’s his father. He’s a preacher up on the mountain. One of Edith Morton’s distant cousins. He did the first half of her service.”

  I made a face as my memory of Abel came back. He’d spent nearly an hour trying to preach poor Edith into heaven, or at the very least, made sure the rest of us had a little foretaste of hell. Lots of fire and brimstone, without even touching on things like mercy and grace. I wouldn’t really have thought the guy next to him was his son, though. They didn’t look at all similar.

  Wren sighed heavily. “I guess I have to go talk to him, since I know him in a professional capacity. He gives me the creeps, though. Come with me, pleeeeease?”

  She looked at me with pleading puppy-dog eyes.

  “Fine.” I laughed. “Let’s go talk to the scary preacher.”

  It was mostly Wren doing the talking, and I wasn’t really sure why she’d needed to drag me along. As soon as she started talking, her work persona kicked in, and she was all sunshine and smiles. But after a moment, I realized that Abel Davenport wasn’t returning her smiles. He continued to thumb through the comics as he spoke to her, pulling out a copy every few minutes to add to the stack in his left hand, which had a gauze bandage wrapped around the palm and pinky finger. The whole thing felt off. Davenport really didn’t strike me as the type who would like Doctor Strange.

  A late-model burgundy Dodge Charger screeched to a halt in front of us, blocking the road. The driver slammed the door and stalked over to Elijah Davenport, who was now at the refreshment table. Even if I hadn’t seen the new arrival around town before, I’d have known whose son he was. To use one of my grandmother’s phrases, there’s no way Steve Blevins could deny that boy. Like his father at that age, Derrick wore his blond hair fairly long, although to his credit, he’d steered clear of the heavily feathered mullet Steve sported in high school. Derrick was about the same height and weight, with the same general features, and a similar penchant for muscle cars. He’d also inherited his father’s angry face, unfortunately, which was at that moment directed at Elijah, who was backing away as he approached.

  “How much you asking for these?” Reverend Davenport asked Wren.

  “Um, well…I was thinking fifty cents each, but I guess I could go three for a dollar, since you’re clearly an avid collector.”

  “Oh, I ain’t a collector,” Davenport said in a loud voice, clearly intended to carry. “Simply doin’ my part by removin’ this filth before it falls into the hands of someone more easily influenced. You got sorcery, here. Demons. Half-naked women. Really, Ms. Lawson, I’m shocked you’d offer somethin’ like this, given your role in the community, and worst of all”—he gestured toward Main Street, where the back of Shepherd’s Flock Community Church was visible—“within sight of a house of God. Sabrina the Teenage Witch? What kinda message does that send to children? It’ll be well worth a few of my hard-earned dollars to toss these foul things into a firepit at my revival tonight and watch them burn.”

  Wren had been quietly simmering through his mini sermon. “Excuse me?” she said, reaching out to snatch the box away from him. “That’s not happening.”

  I was torn between watching this confrontation and the one that was heating up across the lawn. Derrick Blevins had just shoved Reverend Davenport’s son into the oak tree. When Elijah stumbled back, he nearly toppled the lemonade dispenser.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Reverend Davenport.” Wren’s tone made it clear that she was very, very far from and possibly even the direct opposite of sorry. “I didn’t realize that you were looking through that box. I’m pretty sure those are first editions, and I couldn’t possibly let them go for less than fifty dollars each. Looks like you have about a dozen there. But since I am a kind and generous soul, I’ll cut you a deal and round it down to five hundred bucks.”

  “Five hundred?” Davenport huffed. “You can’t change the price! Fifty cents.” He looked around, trying to get someone to back him up. “Y’all heard her. She said fifty cents each!”

  All chatter had stopped, so you could tell that the other customers, including Mindy and Meredith Tucker, were indeed paying attention, even though most of them kept up the pretense of combing through the clothing racks and boxes of vinyl records while they listened. In my experience, this sort of drama was at least half of the draw of yard sales. Usually the squabbles broke out between the bargain hunters, however, so this was an interesting variation on the theme.

  “I can do anything I want,” Wren told him with a toss of her head. “My yard, my sale, my rules. And if you want those comics, it will be five hundred dollars. Cash only.”

  Wren seemed to have the situation with the reverend fully in hand, so I moved toward the other confrontation, which appeared to be heating up. I had no clue what Davenport’s son and Derrick Blevins were arguing about, and I really didn’t care. All I knew was that they needed to take it elsewhere. Otherwise an entire plate of kitchen-sink cookies was about to become ant food, and I’d probably be the one picking up the trash and recycling cans they were inches away from knocking over.

  “Hey!” I yelled. “Whatever this is about, you need to take it somewhere else.”

  Both of the guys’ heads turned toward me. Before I could say anything more, however, Derrick Blevins stabbed an angry finger into Elijah’s chest. “Take care of it,” he said in a menacing tone. “Today. You understand me?” Then he snatched two of the cookies from the plate on the table and marched back to his car.

  I felt a wave of sympathy for Elijah Davenport. It was quite possibly unwarranted. I didn’t know him, and he could well be a jerk. In fact, he gave off a bit of a jerk vibe, and judging from the way Reverend Davenport was acting, the guy could easily have inherited more than a bit of that character trait from his pop. But I’d been on the other end of several similar shouting matches with Derrick Blevins’s doppelganger dad. The Blevins sneer always made me want to punch something, and that was sort of the way Elijah was looking at Derrick as he drove off.

  He turned and glowered at me. “What are you staring at?”

  I decided that the sympathy was indeed unwarranted. “Just one of the two fools who nearly knocked over the refreshment table,” I muttered as he walked away.

  He took a few steps in the direction of his father, who was still arguing with Wren, then hesitated and turned toward one of the miscellaneous tables. A bunch of kids’ toys were scattered about, many of them Happy Meal collectibles from the 1980s. He must have seen something he liked.

  When I got back to Wren, Abel Davenport had shifted his attention to her DVD collection. He was clutching Ghostbusters, Dirty Dancing, A Werewolf in London, and The Lost Boys, along with a boxed set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a few others I couldn’t see against his chest.

  “I don’t have to sell you my things,” Wren said. “I have the right to refuse service. I also have the right to tell you to get off my property.”

  Personally, I thought Wren should just give him the DVDs. They’d probably give off toxic fumes if he tried to burn them, and maybe she’d get the last laugh. But the best friend’s job at a yard sale is strictly a supporting role. If she had decided we were confronting this guy, I was here to provide backup.

  “Wren’s right,” I told Davenport. “Anyway, I called dibs on those DVDs already. My sister has two kids in preschool, and she’s always looking for fun movies to keep them entertained.”

  Wren snorted at that, both because I’m an only child and because I’m a wuss when it comes to horror movies. The notion of me even watching The Lost Boys is ridiculous, let alone showing it to toddlers.

  Abel Davenport narrowed his eyes. They were already a bit on the beady side, so this had the effect of making them disappear almost entirely into the fleshy folds of his face. “The unclean are shut out,” he said, “and so are all who practice magic, all fornicators, all murderers, and those who worship idols, and everyone who loves falsehood and t
ells lies.” He ended with a slow, self-satisfied smile.

  While I certainly couldn’t have identified the specific section he was spouting, I’d spent enough hours in Sunday School to know that it was a Bible verse. So I narrowed my eyes right back at him and dredged up a few of my own. “Judge not, lest ye be judged, Reverend. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Do not throw pearls before swine. Jesus wept. I didn’t get much sleep last night. I’m not in a good mood, so give me my DVDs, or I will smite you.”

  A brief burst of siren came from behind me. I turned to see Steve Blevins double parked almost exactly where his son had been earlier. One more trait the boy had apparently inherited from his daddy.

  “Is there a problem?” Blevins asked, standing inside the open car door and staring at us over the top of the cruiser.

  Davenport glared at me and Wren. “Not at all, Sheriff.” Then he opened his hands dramatically, letting the DVD cases fall to the ground at our feet. “Come on, Elijah. Let’s get back up the mountain. We’ve spent enough time ministering to these heathens.”

  When he reached the center of the lawn, however, he turned toward the people clustered around the tables and continued in a loud voice. “Folks, we got a revival goin’ on up at the Church of Divine Signs at Pender’s Gap this weekend. Starts tonight at eight p.m. I’m guessing most of y’all have heard of us. I set us up a YouTube channel and a website, and we’re on Facebook now, too, if you need directions or would like to take a look at some of the miracles God is working through our ministry. If you want to see what real faith is, and maybe get some for yourself, come on up and catch a bit of the Holy Spirit tonight.” And with that, Abel Davenport bowed his head deeply and began walking toward his truck.

  Wren shook her head in amazement. “Well, I’ll be a blue-nosed gopher. That awful man just used us. He staged that entire thing trying to drum up business for his—”

  I dug an elbow into her side, since Abel’s son was approaching. “Hey, I just realized I forgot my wallet,” he said. “Would you set this aside for me? I’ll be back.”

  Elijah Davenport was holding a little three-eyed green alien. It was made of some sort of rubbery material and was about the size of Wren’s palm. It looked like one of those finger puppets they used to have in fast-food kids’ meals. I wasn’t certain, but I thought it might be from the Toy Story movies. Those were after our time, so they must have been stuff that Wren’s cousins or their kids had left at her grandmother’s house.

  Wren gave the guy a confused look, and then said, “Oh, that’s okay. It was in the two-for-a-dollar bin, right? You can just have it.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head adamantly. He looked almost scared at the suggestion. “My pop won’t like it. And I don’t take anything for free. I’ll be back with your money. I promise.”

  Then Elijah hurried down the sidewalk toward the truck where his father was waiting. As soon as he got into the truck, it pulled away.

  I was half expecting Blevins to motion me over, but he was already heading down James Street, in the same direction as the Davenports. Was he following them?

  A reflection caught my eye from the upstairs window of the house across the street. The realtor with the video camera was standing between the open blinds. He seemed to be filming, which was odd. Video of a cop car in front of the property didn’t really seem like a selling point to me.

  “That was weird,” Wren said, shaking her head.

  I thought at first that she was talking about the guy filming from the upstairs window. But she was staring down the street, where the taillights of Blevins’s car and the Davenports’ truck were receding into the distance.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Elijah seems a little old for teenage rebellion. But…maybe his dad didn’t let him have toys when he was little?”

  Wren put the toy on the lawn next to her chair. “Maybe. Or maybe he’s just like his old man and he’s planning to burn this poor little green guy.”

  “I don’t know. Did you see the way he was looking at it? Almost like he hated to part with it, even temporarily.”

  A few minutes later, the realtor or photographer or whatever he was left the house across the street. He tossed his equipment into the backseat of the SUV, which I realized had Georgia tags. That seemed a bit unusual, but I supposed it was possible he’d recently moved. Or maybe it was a loaner. Once his gear was stored, he looked over toward Wren’s lawn. The man was kind of tubby, average height or just below, with one of those bizarre little beards that was just a triangular dot under his lower lip. I probably wouldn’t have even spotted the beard if he hadn’t strolled across the street to toss something into Wren’s recycling bin. Then he grabbed a couple of cookies and a cup of lemonade and left without even looking at the items on Wren’s tables.

  How rude.

  ✰ Chapter Ten ✰

  After digging through Wren’s junk for nearly half an hour, one of the two Tucker women finally found something she deemed worthy of purchase. It was a red-and-white Christmas shirt with a young and sexy version of Mrs. Claus on the front. It must have been a gift, because there’s no way Wren would have bought that tacky thing.

  But, apparently, it appealed to Mindy. Go figure.

  “I have a question,” she said, leaning toward Wren. “Is all of this stuff at the sale originally yours? Or do you get to keep stuff that comes in? You know…with the bodies?”

  Wren, who was drinking from a bottle of water, nearly choked. “Of course the stuff is mine! And no. I don’t keep the deceased’s possessions. Anything they aren’t buried with has already been returned to the family when I get the body.”

  Mindy gave a sigh of relief. “Oh, good. I just wanted to make sure this shirt wasn’t cursed or anything. Wouldn’t you hate to find out you were wearing an outfit someone died in?” She shuddered. “That would be so creepy.”

  “Yes,” Wren said through clenched teeth. “It really would. That will be three dollars, please.”

  As Wren took the money, my eyes wandered over to Mindy’s mom. Meredith’s back was to me as she browsed an assortment of Disney figurines. I didn’t know if Wren had checked online to see if they were worth anything. Probably not, since they were on the dollar table. I suspected quite a few of them were worth more than that, though, even if they weren’t new and in the box.

  Meredith Tucker apparently thought so, too, because she’d just dropped two of them into her open purse.

  I was off the porch in an instant, stalking across Wren’s front yard like a woman on a mission. Meredith never even saw me coming.

  “Put that back on the table right now.” I didn’t shout, but I also didn’t make any particular effort to keep my voice down.

  Meredith looked around and smiled nervously at a couple who had turned our way.

  “What on earth are you talking about, Ruby?”

  “Ruth. And I’m talking about the Disney figures you just slipped into your purse. Put them back.”

  “Dang,” an old man behind us said to his wife. “Reckon how much them little dolls are worth for her to try and steal them?”

  Wren came over and asked what was going on.

  Meredith didn’t even look at her. “Are you finished, Mindy? I’m not going to stand here and let this awful woman accuse me of stealing a couple of worthless toys. Let’s go.”

  She gave me one last scathing look and turned on her heel. I took a step forward and grabbed the strap of her purse with both hands before she could get away.

  “Let go!” Meredith yelled. “Have you lost your mind?”

  I gave the purse another hard yank, and one of the metal rings securing the strap snapped in half. As the strap came free, I lost my balance, landing hard on my rear. The contents of the purse went airborne. A wallet, crumpled-up tissues, a brush, makeup, and two Disney figures came raining down like candy at a holiday parade, along with a necklace and a pair of gloves. I remembered seeing the last two items on Wren’s tables as well, and I was quite certain t
hey hadn’t been paid for.

  Meredith gasped and dropped to her knees. She began crawling on the ground, scooping her belongings back into her purse, along with several bits of loose grass and dirt. The stolen goods would have been swept up, too, but I beat her to them.

  I stood and handed them to Wren, who stared down at the items she was holding, baffled. Why would anyone shoplift a few dollars’ worth of junk? Then she looked at the Tuckers. “I think it’s time for the two of you to leave.”

  Meredith’s face had turned an ugly shade of purple. She stabbed a finger in my direction, and I was happy to see that the nail on that finger was now broken. “That woman is crazy!”

  Wren held it together until the two women rounded the corner onto Main Street, and then she burst out laughing. “Oh my God. I wish I’d had my phone out to video that. You stomped across the yard like you were McGruff the Crime Dog, ready to take a bite out of a shoplifter. And the look on her face!” She collapsed into another peal of laughter, holding her sides as she sank down onto the porch steps.

  “Well…I wasn’t going to let her steal from you,” I said a little defensively.

  “And I truly appreciate that.” Wren grinned and dropped her voice. “I’m sure the fact that the woman is almost certainly one of Ed’s ex-girlfriends had absolutely nothing to do with your quest for justice.”

  I tried to look indignant. But it was no use. I ended up grinning back at her. “Okay, yes. It might have been a minor consideration.”

  When the sale ended at noon, most of the items had been cleared out. We hauled two medium-sized boxes back into the garage, and Wren scrawled DONATION on the side of both of them. “Remind me never to do this again,” she said. “Seriously, I should have my head examined.”

  “It wasn’t that bad.”

  Wren laughed. “True. I kicked a preacher off my property, and you ripped a woman’s purse in half. But I suppose it could have been worse. Do you think Mindy and Meredith have tracked Ed down yet? You should probably warn him, you know.”