Spooky Business

by S. E. Harmon

  “What?” I asked as I played with his hair idly.

  “I asked you if I was noisy.”

  Dear God, yes. Between all the grunting and moaning, the slapping of skin on skin, and the squeaky mattress, I could only pray my parents had gone temporarily deaf.

  “Nope,” I finally said. “You were so quiet I was tempted to check your pulse for signs of life.”

  He chuckled tiredly. “Good. I’m going to have enough trouble facing your parents at breakfast as it is.”

  “Breakfast? That’s cute.” It was my turn to be amused. “You think we’re going to be allowed to shirk early morning yoga now that we’ve let them inside the house?”

  I rolled off him with a groan. I flopped on my back, and a suspicious hiss began as our mattress gave up the ghost. I pretended not to hear the gentle whine of air, sending us closer and closer to the floor, and so did Danny.

  After a few seconds, he let out an exasperated sigh. “Are we pretending this isn’t happening?”

  “Yes.”

  “One of us should probably get up and patch it with tape.”

  “One of us certainly should,” I said pointedly.

  “You know, we’re going to wind up on the floor.”

  “Growing up, my parents thought mattresses were an environmental waste. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve slept on. The floor is my happy place.”

  “They seem to be getting along just fine on our Serta.”

  “Arthritis has a way of making you abandon your principles.”

  He levered himself off the mattress with a groan. “Where’d I put the Scotch tape anyway?”

  “Kitchen junk drawer,” I said helpfully. “Don’t forget the lantern.”

  “Fine. Could you at least start blowing the mattress back up?”

  “The pump runs on electricity.”

  “I’m pretty sure hot air will work too.” His tone was rife with amusement. “And we both know you’ve got plenty of that.”

  I liked to think that despite the darkness, he saw me flip him the double bird.

  Chapter 5

  Two days later, Hurricane Alberto blew out of town with much less fanfare than he’d arrived. That was a damned good thing because I’d plowed through most of our hurricane snacks on day one. The complaining of my fellow storm companions fell on deaf ears. As I stuffed the last of the Chex Mix in my mouth, I informed them that hurricane snacks must be consumed during the hurricane.

  Any idiot knows that.

  The destruction to the city and surrounding areas was substantial but not catastrophic. As usual, the Keys had taken the brunt of the hit. The damage to Danny’s—our—place was very little. We trooped over to my parents’ house and found them to be much in the same situation.

  Our power was still off, along with the cable, and anything else I might need to make life bearable. Because he was a kind, caring human being, Danny called Tate and offered up our unit to help with community cleanup. Because he was also a kiss-ass, suck up, mama’s boy, I knew that we’d probably end the day at Paula McKenna’s house.

  Before we left, we bravely launched Operation Save All the Food, which involved creating odd breakfast combinations out of leftovers. I sat down to a breakfast of fettuccine alfredo, while Danny had pizza. My parents unearthed some macaroni and cheese that I didn’t remember making or buying. Despite my worried objections about food poisoning, they began wolfing it down like a pair of starved rottweilers.

  It would’ve been a pleasant time if my mother hadn’t kept winking at me. The first time, I winked back because why the hell not? But the second time, I just stared at her, the gears in my mind working a little slowly. Then, I got it.

  I deserved this. The risks of squeaky air mattress sex had kept us chaste for a single day, but last night, Danny had started rubbing my back in a purely therapeutic way and… well, nontherapeutic things had happened. Dirty things. Loud things.

  Now she knew. And she knew that I knew. And I knew that she knew that I knew. But if she mentioned any of what we both knew aloud, I was going to attach her tiny-ass house to a trailer hitch and drop it into the Atlantic.

  I scowled at the next wink she sent my way. “Mother.”

  “What?”

  “Just… Mother.”

  Danny’s brow furrowed. “What’d I miss?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Nothing at all,” she agreed.

  He eyed us suspiciously, but his precious pizza took precedence over our odd behavior. He stuffed an entire crust in his mouth and went all billy goat on it. I thought my father was similarly engrossed in his mac and cheese, but then I saw the small smirk on his mouth. A blush spread over my cheeks. Christ, just how loud had we gotten last night?

  “So did you boys sleep well on the air mattress?” my mother asked solicitously.

  “Just fine, thank you, Robyn,” Danny said, busy demolishing another slice of pizza. He clearly wasn’t a master of extracting subtext from pretext like myself.

  I cleared my throat. “Yes, we slept just fine.”

  “Did you? Sleep, that is?”

  “Of course,” I said quickly.

  “That’s good.”

  I sent her a scowl, and she chuckled. Finally catching on, Danny looked at us grimly, a pizza crust dangling from his fingers. “I think I know, but I’m afraid to confirm.”

  My mother opened her mouth gleefully, and my father, now my favorite parent, shoved a spoonful of the questionable mac and cheese in it. “Mjfsnuf,” she mumbled.

  I pushed back from the table and stacked our plates for their trip to the sink. “We should head out before she finishes that.”

  “Sage advice,” my father agreed.

  *

  We spent most of the morning helping in the community—cleanup, welfare checks, rescuing animals that hadn’t been properly secured inside, and helping out a couple of stranded motorists. Not long after, Danny suggested we check on his mother and see how she’d weathered the storm, as I’d known he would. Just call me Ms. Cleo.

  “It only makes sense,” Danny said as we headed toward his mother’s neighborhood of Belford Heights. It was a quiet, gated, fifty-five-plus community, with good-sized homes and backed by a golf course. “We need a break to eat anyway, and nothing is open.”

  By tacit, unspoken agreement, we both ignored the bright lights of the KFC as he passed it, and the handwritten sign on the window declaring: We’re Open! “Mm-hmm.”

  “I sent her a text this morning, and she said she’d love to see us. I’m sure she’s a little lonely.”

  And I was sure the word “us” had not been used in that text. I don’t know if I mentioned this, but Paula McKenna isn’t exactly my biggest fan. “Probably,” I finally said.

  He sent me a sidelong look. It was clear he’d readied himself for any arguments I would make, but he shouldn’t have worried. He put up with my parents, who were lovable but admittedly knew how to tap-dance on a nerve, so I could put up with his. We were a couple now, which was shorthand for your hell is my hell.

  Besides, that cantankerous old bat—ahem, I mean his mother—treated Danny like he was something precious. That netted her a lot of goodwill from me. She was a million times better than Danny’s birth parents, that was for sure. He was the by-product of a mother who could never get high enough, and a father who seemed to prefer prison to the real world. Paula had come into Danny’s life after he’d been bounced into foster care for the third time. As far as I knew, the only thing she adored more than Danny was Jesus, and sometimes even that order shifted.

  It was nearly three before we pulled into her driveway. She barely waited for Danny to exit the vehicle before engulfing him in a tight hug. I took my slow ass, sweet time ambling over to give her a chance to inspect her bear cub.

  When she finally spotted me standing there, she gave me a reserved greeting. Really, all she said was my name in a cool, crisp voice. “Ms. McKenna,” I said in response.

  Once upon a time,
she’d invited me to call her Paula. That was before I left Danny and moved back to DC. We now reflected upon the four-year gap in our relationship as necessary. We’d grown separately and come back together even stronger than before.

  Paula didn’t seem to think of it quite as fondly.

  “It’s always good to see you, Rainstorm,” she said, her voice stiff and formal. “Daniel, I wasn’t aware you were bringing company. I would’ve put on some coffee.”

  He squinted at her. “Mom, the power is out. We’re not exactly expecting refreshments. And Rain’s not company, he’s—”

  “Here to help,” I said, putting on my chipper as a fucking cartoon squirrel voice. If he told her I was family, her head might just blow right off her shoulders, and we already had a lot of cleanup to do.

  “Well, I’m sure he has better things to do than hang around here.” She turned to Danny. “As for you, I think you should start on the roof. Hopefully, the damage is mostly cosmetic.”

  As if sharing a single thought, the three of us looked around the yard and then back at each other. If the number of shingles strewn about on the grass was any indicator of roof damage, that was a tall hope.

  “I’m pretty certain there’s a leak in the dining room,” she continued, her brow puckered with concern. “We might have to eat Sunday dinner in the kitchen.”

  A fate worse than death, to be sure. I didn’t go to Sunday Fundays at the McKennas. Even before we’d broken up, I hadn’t wrangled an invitation. All I knew was that it started with church and ended with pot roast. Danny usually brought home tons of leftovers in Tupperware. Of course, she marked his name on the side—and only his name—on a piece of tape. And of course, I didn’t give a rat’s ass and tucked into the food anyway.

  We walked around the property, making notes about what needed to be fixed and what needed to be junked. I was put on trash duty while Paula busied herself bringing the patio furniture back outside. Danny disappeared up a ladder and on the roof.

  After I finished removing debris from the yard, I was promoted from trash duty to Head Honcho of Removing Hurricane Shutters. I squinted up at the roof. I hadn’t heard a sound from that quarter in quite some time. If Danny was up there hiding out and getting a tan, he would rue the fucking day.

  My new task consisted of removing screws from the giant plexiglass screens and stacking them neatly in the garage. It was annoying but easy work, something I could do mindlessly. That gave my mind plenty of time to mentally roam. Inevitably, my brain roamed over to the copycat murders.

  If Kane hadn’t killed the three women, then we had a dangerous copycat on our hands, maybe even still operating undetected. On the surface, there was nothing to connect them. Lana Snow had been a model, unmarried, and without children. She hadn’t had much of a home base and mostly crashed on friends’ couches.

  The second victim, Ivy Khan, was also unmarried, but she had one child. She’d been a fourth-grade teacher, whose life was as stable as Lana’s was scattered. Rosetta Smythe, known as Rosy to her friends, was the third victim. She’d been a newlywed, married to her high school sweetheart, and worked in a tire shop as an office manager.

  Other than details of their abductions, that’s all I knew. Now I had to figure out who they were beyond the glare of a computer screen. Where did they live? What were their hobbies? Who were the important people in their microcosms? No detail was too small in trying to find a connection between the three women.

  My phone rang, jolting me out of thought. I juggled the drill and a handful of screws to pull it out of my pocket. A familiar picture appeared on my screen, and I put the call on speaker. She didn’t bother with pleasantries. “I found it,” Chevy announced.

  It took a few seconds for me to realize who she was talking about. “The fair from my dream? It’s only been a couple of days.”

  “I know,” she said smugly. “I’m just that good.”

  I should’ve known better than to doubt her skills. “You know, humility is—”

  “Highly overrated.” Computer keys clicking sounded on her end. “The fairgrounds were originally owned by the Cartwright family. It was named Zappa Fair, and they ran it successfully for forty-five years.”

  “The place I saw was abandoned,” I said with a frown. “What happened to it?”

  “Bad luck, mostly. Several incidents happened at the fair that tarnished their reputation.”

  “Like what?”

  “Two kids died on a freak accident on the carousel. A year later, a woman was abducted while on the fairgrounds and never seen again. The last straw was when they found a man in the parking lot, dead of a gunshot wound to the back of the head.”

  That sounded less like bad luck and more like a fucking curse.

  “People blamed the patriarch, William Cartwright, for the woman’s abduction. He eventually committed suicide. The fair folded a few months later. Now there’s talk of the grounds being haunted.”

  “A good old-fashioned haunting is the story of my life,” I murmured. “When I walk into a room, the theme from The Twilight Zone just starts playing.”

  She snorted. “The grounds now belong to his grandson, Terrance Cartwright. He lives in Tampa. He said you’re more than welcome to visit the property, but he won’t set foot on the place.”

  “So kind of him to give me unfettered access to his haunted, dilapidated fair. Can you text me the—” My phone dinged with a text, and I smiled wryly. “Thanks.”

  “Not a problem.”

  My mind flashed back to the ghost I met in my dream and the wound on the back of his head. “What was the gunshot victim’s name?”

  “Joseph Carr.” I heard the faint clicking of the mouse as she probably navigated her computer screen. “He was twenty-eight when he was killed.”

  Carr. That was one hell of a coincidence. “I don’t suppose his mother’s name was Valerie,” I said slowly.

  “Let me check.” After a moment, she made a satisfied sound. “Yes, it is. How did you know?”

  “Just a hunch,” I murmured. “Was there any mention of an Alex in Joseph’s history?”

  “Alexander Gilroy was Joseph’s ex-boyfriend and the main suspect in his death. Gilroy was cleared when his alibi checked out. Hold on, I’ll just send you the entire case file.”

  “Thanks. I owe you one.”

  “Hon, you owe me a million by now.”

  No point in denying the obvious. I hung up and checked the text she’d sent me with directions to the Zappa Fair. I pulled up Google maps, entered the address, and got a thirty-minute estimate.

  “Who was that?” Danny asked from somewhere behind me.

  “Chevy,” I said, pocketing my phone as I turned. “She sent me an address of a place I saw in a dream.”

  I thought about cleaning that up and making it less weird, but I suppressed the urge. If Danny wasn’t used to my weirdness by now, he never would be.

  His expression darkened. “The same dream that had you talking to yourself like a crazy person in the middle of a storm?”

  “That would be the one.” I pointed at the trash bag and grabber in his hand. “What are you doing, anyway?”

  “Picking up shingles that flew off the roof.” He clicked the grabber a couple of times, making the ends move like pincers. “Maybe it’s time you told me exactly what happened in this dream.”

  I sighed. “Let’s walk and talk.”

  I filled him in as he scoured the yard, picking up shingles. By the time I finished, he was rubbing his neck absently, just as I’d known he would. His neck was the place tension gathered first, especially when he was worried about something but determined to downplay it.

  “I want to go check out this fair,” I said. “I’m going to need the car.”

  “My car?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Stop being precious about the Charger, Daniel. Yes, your car.”

  “Well, you’ll have to forgive me for being cautious. The last time someone let you drive his car, you started a high-spe
ed car chase through Miami.”

  “I did not start that car chase,” I reminded him. “And, may I remind you, there was no damage to Kevin’s beloved Camaro?”

  He dug the key fob out of his pocket with a huff, and I took it before he could change his mind. “Maybe I should just come with you.”

  “If I need backup, I know where to find you,” I said lightly. I wasn’t sure Joseph would show if Danny was there. “Besides, I’m just going to be looking around.”

  “Famous last words.” He sighed. “Should I even bother to tell you to be careful?”

  “I will.” I handed him the cordless drill and leaned up to kiss him briefly. “I love you.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Despite his displeasure, the corner of his mouth lifted slightly. “I love you, too.”

  “How much?”

  “Enough.”

  “Enough is a little too fucking relative for my tastes, Irish.”

  He let out an exaggerated sigh that was equal parts amused and exasperated, his cheeks a little pink. “Fine. What we have is truly, madly, deeply kind of shit.”

  “And you’d better know it.” I tilted my face up for a kiss, and he obliged. It was a little too short. Almost a peck. “Did I mention my days as a sexless monk are over? Feel free to put some tongue in the next one.”

  “I’m not going to French you on my mother’s lawn.” Flustered on Danny was a good look. Despite his knee-jerk refusal, he couldn’t stop looking at my mouth. “What will the neighbors think?”

  “They’ll think their sex lives suck… which they probably do if they have their noses pressed to the window, watching two guys kiss.” I waited patiently, rocking back on my heels, thumbs in my belt loops. At his growl, I just smiled. “Any day now would be good, Irish.”

  Even though I was fully expecting him to capitulate, his hand snaking around my neck took me by surprise. He hauled me in closer and kissed the living daylights out of me. He was so thorough, I could only put my hands at his waist and hold on for dear life. When things threatened to get less PG-13, we both pulled away, a little breathless.

  His cheeks went even pinker, but he looked extremely satisfied with himself. And amused as I struggled to relearn the basic concepts of inhaling oxygen. “Better?” he asked.