The Garden (Haunted Series)

by Alexie Aaron

  Ted took out his phone and typed furiously into it. “Exit 126, not too far from our destination,” he said and added, “Murphy could terrorize the tourists.”

  Mia turned and looked at her friend. “Would you like that?”

  Murphy gave her a wicked grin.

  ~

  Audrey was sitting across from her father at the table while her mother fussed about the kitchen making a cooler of sandwiches for Audrey’s new friends. “Ma, you don’t have to make so many.”

  “They’ll keep. Just put them in the refrigerator. I put together some of that potato salad you like. Luke, did you get the chips I asked for?”

  “Already in the car,” he told her. “Along with the pop. You know, they are adults, we could have bought some beers too.”

  “I don’t want to push alcohol on people, it isn’t proper.”

  Audrey watched the two of them debate what was proper. She felt bad that her parents were laying out so much of their retirement income on this treat for the PEEPs team. She tried to pay for it, but they looked hurt, so she let it go.

  “Dad, I’ve got a few questions for you about Bugs Moran and Two Tall Terry. Did I tell you I’ve seen the latter myself?”

  “No. You better not be teasing me. Go on, tell me the story and don’t spare the details.”

  Audrey waited for her mother to sit down too before beginning. “Too Tall Terry is Terrance Bonner and…”

  ~

  Audrey’s father pulled up behind Mia’s pickup truck. Ted had just pulled in and they were in the process of unloading some bags from the back. Mia hopped off the bed of the truck and walked around to the driver’s side window and waited until Luke rolled it down. She stuck her hand in the car and introduced herself. Luke gripped her hand firmly and commented on her grip.

  “I do a lot of handyman jobs,” she explained. “Would you like to come in, Mr. McCarthy, for a tour?” Mia offered. “It’s not every day you get to see where Too Tall Terry met his end,” she tempted.

  Luke looked over at his daughter and asked, “Would I be a disruption to you?”

  Audrey smiled. “No, not at all. Besides, you don’t think I’m going to carry in the four coolers of food all by myself?”

  “Did you say food?” Mia’s eyes danced.

  “Homemade potato salad, sandwiches and some beans I have to heat up…”

  “Beans! I love beans. Hey, Ted they brought beans.”

  “You’re officially Minnie Mouse’s best friends,” Ted announced as he closed the back of the truck and walked over. “Why don’t you park your car beside the fancy lawyer’s car, and I’ll get Cid out here to help us carry in your coolers,” he directed.

  Luke waited until Audrey got out before he followed Ted’s hand gestures towards the expensive car.

  Audrey impulsively hugged Mia. “Thank you, I know he is so excited.”

  Mia looked up at her. “Must run in the family.”

  The front door opened and Cid emerged, followed by Mike. The men shook hands with Audrey’s father before the four of them lugged the big plastic coolers inside. Mia held Audrey back a little.

  “Let the men get acquainted. This way there is no jockeying for position in order to impress your dad. He can be just one of the guys and not the redhead hottie’s daddy,” she counseled.

  “You know a lot about men.”

  “These men,” Mia corrected. “Okay, I think we’ve given them long enough to get acquainted, time to put some estrogen into the mix.”

  The two women linked arms, walked up the walk and into the house.

  Burt looked at Ted and Mia. “Since you’re here early, how about us taking the GPR down to where the old hog barn stood. Mr. McCarthy…”

  “Luke, call me Luke,” he insisted.

  “Luke, would you like to join us?” Burt asked.

  “Yes, sir, I would.”

  Ted leaned in and whispered in Mia’s ear. “Remind me to tell you something Murphy told me.”

  Mia nodded. She was distracted by the black mass that was forming in the kitchen. She squeezed Ted’s hand and pointed. “Trouble.”

  She walked in between the mass and pulled out her shotgun. Ted moved the group out of the kitchen and into the hall.

  “Terrance?” she asked and was rewarded with him forming into roughly the same shape of the behemoth they had dealt with before. “We are just going to map out where your body is. Mr. McCarthy is here to witness that you didn’t steal the money,” she informed him. “I don’t want anyone of the team hurt. Do you hear me?”

  Terrance nodded.

  “You want to show me and Murph where we should start looking for you?”

  “Yes.”

  “K,” Mia said and put the shotgun back and covered it with her hoodie. She reached out a gloved hand and was rewarded with the giant bending to take the hand in his. “We’ll meet you down at the hog barn,” Mia called over her shoulder as she was escorted out the open front door that Murphy held.

  Burt, Mike and Alan, who had come out of the dining room to see what the commotion was all about, headed quickly down the kitchen stairs to move the GPR to where Mia was being led.

  “First of all, what was that?” a stunned Luke asked.

  “Two Tall Terry,” Cid explained. “He’s a bit volatile, likes to toss us around.”

  “How come he behaves around your girlfriend?” he asked Ted.

  “Two things. One, she rescued him in the woods, took the thorn out of his paw. And second, that sawed-off shotgun she carries is packed with enough rock salt to bisect the monster.”

  “Kill it?”

  “You can’t kill something that is already dead, Daddy,” Audrey explained.

  “It’s like a video game…” Ted started but seeing the age of the man changed tactics. “It’s like the pins at the bowling alley, once you knock them down they have to reset. This takes energy and time.”

  “We better get down there,” Cid said. He handed two ear coms to Audrey and took one with him for Mia.

  “Put it in like Grandma’s hearing aid,” Audrey instructed. “Ted’s voice will be in your ear. If you want to talk to him, you lightly tap it like this,” she demonstrated.

  Luke did so and followed Cid and his daughter out of the house. Ted put on the headset of power and started to link the coms to the people wearing them. He looked at the empty house and sighed. “It’s lonely being King,” he said, listening to his words as they echoed through the halls.

  Mia trotted along with Terrance. She was winded by the time they reached the level area a hundred yards from the house. She turned to see the men exiting from the storage area, pushing the GPR as fast as they could without damaging it. Cid, Audrey and Luke followed them.

  Murph didn’t like that Terrance still held her hand. Mia looked up at the giant and asked politely, “Can I have my hand back?”

  Terrance nodded and moved into the field. He pointed to the foundation walls that had been pushed upwards from the frost in the winter. Mia stepped over the cinder block and moved towards where he stood looking down. “Here,” was all he said before disappearing.

  Mia looked over at Murphy and asked, “If he’s out in the open then why did he warn us away from his sanctum?”

  “Ruse,” Murphy said. He started to drag his axe across the hard ground. By the time the men arrived with the fancy machine. Murphy had already marked the spot with a large X.

  Mia and Murphy stood watch as the men took turns scanning the area with the GPR. Ted agreed with them that Murphy’s x pretty much marked the spot. There was a vault of some kind below it. He suggested that they wait until morning when Father Santos’s team would be there to begin extracting the bodies.

  Burt looked over at Alan. “It’s your call.”

  Alan thought a moment before he spoke, “We can’t protect the contents once we open it. I agree with Ted. We’ll wait until tomorrow. Audrey, did you find Terrance’s wife’s grave?”

  “Actually, it’s down the roa
d. She’s not in the Bonner family mausoleum but close by. According to the cemetery’s records, there is an empty spot bought and paid for by the Bonner family for Terrance beside his wife,” Audrey mentioned.

  “Might be an opportunity for a little DNA collection,” Mia said to Ted. “We wouldn’t have to blackmail them at all.”

  “Just be a tad illegal, Minnie Moll,” Ted said mimicking Cagney.

  “Anything for you, Poopsie.”

  Alan called for a meeting of the minds after Luke McCarthy left, in the dining room. He had information to impart and needed to see the progress made on resting the ghosts.

  “First things first, Audrey, have you examined Eleanor’s gardening books?”

  “Yes, and unfortunately they are filled with, excuse the expression, garden variety cures for aphids and rot, popular during her tenure of the garden.”

  “What about what Gerome Humphries said about ‘telling her majesty that blood and bone weren’t good for the young plants?’” Alan asked.

  “I have a theory on who her majesty was,” Ted offered.

  “Go ahead.”

  “I think we are talking about Mary, Richard Bonner’s wife. Bloody Mary if you will. As I was charting the data from the GPR, I couldn’t get a rhyme out of my head. ‘Mary Mary quite contrary, how do your roses grow…’ More the ‘pretty maids all in a row’ part. Coincidently, graveyards were called gardens in the olden days. I was talking to Audrey about Eleanor’s manner towards the help. She called them roses. I didn’t understand this until I looked at the footage of our morning maids. Check this out.” Ted put his iPad on the table and pressed play. The footage was of the gossipy maids as they made their way down the upper hall. “Look at their uniforms.”

  “Roses!” Audrey exclaimed.

  “I have a feeling we will find a row of maids planted down there in the dark. Mary’s request for using blood and bone to nurture the roses, I think, has to do with how she killed her husband,” Ted told them.

  The room was silent. No one breathed, waiting for Ted’s revelation. Mia made a note to award him with a Bela Lugosi award for this horrific pause.

  “Burt and Cid did an inventory of the equipment in the machinery area of the basement. There was a pre-patent era wood chipper. It could reduce a tree branch to saw dust and wood chips in no time. Cid spotted something interesting stuck in the blades. Cid, do you have the pieces?”

  Cid dug in his pocket and pulled out a plastic bag. Inside were gray and brown slivers. He handed it to the person next to him and said, “Pass it around.”

  When it had made the circuit, Alan asked, “What are they?”

  “Bone fragments. In this case, they are animal bones. Bernard was very accommodating with his lab,” Ted said as an aside to Mia.

  Mia wondered when Ted went to see Bernard. It had to be today while she was working on her house.

  “I also had Cid dig up a sample of soil from the middle of the subbasement, over where we found the graves. We don’t have the sample to show you as it is still at the Field Museum. I had a call from the technician while you were out back at the hog barn. He informed me that the soil contained bone fragments, probably human.”

  “The ick factor rises,” Mia commented but smiled sweetly at Ted.

  “So you’re saying that you think that Mary showered the roses with blood and bone, in this case, Richard’s. But we have record of a burial.”

  “I imagine it was a closed casket,” Ted guessed.

  “If this is Richard,” Mike started and asked, “How do we rest his spirit if it’s in a million pieces?”

  “Dig up the maids, take four inches of top soil up. That may do it,” suggested Burt. “Fill in the space with concrete mixed with a little dolomite and salt.”

  “That seems plausible,” Ted agreed but cautioned. “He is a very evil presence in this house.”

  “Is it him or Mary?” Mia questioned. “She’s no peach in the decorum department.”

  “Imagine the years of torment she went through. Watching as her husband violated and used the maids,” Audrey offered.

  “There still are a lot of questions to answer,” Alan said.

  “The gray room, who’s idea was that?” Mia asked.

  “Where is Mary buried?” Mike added to the list.

  “Now we need to move on to Eleanor the fraud,” Burt brought up.

  “What?” Alan blurted. “What are you talking about?”

  “Sit down, Alan, we have some bad news,” suggested Audrey.

  Alan sat down in a thud and waited for what he knew was going to be devastating news.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  “So the time of the switch corresponds with where we saw a change in the handwriting in Eleanor’s journal,” Alan said before putting his head back and closing his eyes.

  “Alan, are you alright?” Audrey asked watching him.

  “I’m just taking it all in. Continue,” he requested softly.

  Next Cid and Mike discussed the possibility that faux Eleanor married the bastard son of Richard.

  “Niles Gruber was Richard’s bastard?” Alan clarified. “How would we substantiate this claim? He’s been dead twelve years.”

  “Where’s he buried?” Mia asked.

  “In the Bonner mausoleum next to Eleanor,” Audrey read from her notes. “Eleanor insisted. John’s family wasn’t pleased. I guess the space was filling up.”

  Mia looked at Ted and held up two fingers and then one. “DNA would confirm it. I’m sure that’s possible still?”

  “We may have to do this to hold on to the property. Let’s keep faux Eleanor under wraps until we find Elly’s body,” he pleaded. “At least until we can get Hagan into the white collar prison. We’ll pay five years in advance. The Bonners will have fun petitioning the prison system to get the funds back.”

  “Why, Alan, you’re starting to sound like a lawyer,” Audrey said approvingly.

  Alan started to pack up his briefcase.

  “There’s more, Alan,” Mia spoke up. She looked at him, and he looked like he was going to hurl any minute now. “Sit down, it’s not bad news,” she assured him.

  He sat down and took a deep breath. He motioned for her to speak.

  “I would like to know if Hagan Fowler is indeed adopted. We have a hearsay source,” Mia said looking at Mike. “We think that faux Eleanor changed her will when she found Hagan who may be a relation of hers.”

  “Why? If she has been pretending to be Eleanor Bonner all these years, why would she reach out now?” Alan argued.

  “But if Eleanor is legitimized from her marriage to Gruber, then wouldn’t Hagan’s claim be a better one if he was her direct relation?” Audrey asked.

  Alan raised his hands. “This is so complex. I’m going to have to study some previous cases, if I can find them, before forming my argument, in preparation, if I have to face the judge again. Find me some proof. I can’t go in with a statement from a ghost. Get me Elly’s DNA, Eleanor’s and Niles Gruber’s. Find me something that explains why Eleanor would participate in this farce. And for god’s sake, get these ghosts out of this house!” With that Alan banged one fist on the table. “I don’t have to tell you how important this is. I don’t care how expensive it is, but identify those corpses, plant them in holy ground and let’s get on with our lives.”

  And to add insult to the injury, a banshee scream filled the upper hall as if on cue.

  ~

  Alan left, and the PEEPs plus Audrey retired to the kitchen to eat some comfort food. Elly screamed and tossed some cleaning supplies down at them. It was all that was left in the hall. She quieted down, and Ted and Mia picked up the mess before joining the rest in the kitchen.

  Mia took an extra helping of beans. “When I die I want to come back as a baked bean taste tester.”

  “I always said, Mia has lofty goals,” Mike commented.

  “You’re just jealous, because you haven’t found your end-all food yet,” Mia replied.

&
nbsp; “Mine’s Red Vine licorice,” Ted said.

  “Mia’s cookies,” Cid said dreamily.

  “Thank you, Cid,” Mia said, a smile tugging at her mouth.

  “Clam dip and corn chips,” Burt told the group. “I had them as a child at Tina Marshal’s Hawaiian-themed tenth birthday party and have loved them ever since.”

  They looked at Audrey and she grinned. “You would think by my figure that it would be a pastry of some kind, but actually, I dream of strawberries. Strawberry shortcake like my mother makes. Strawberry ice cream. Anything strawberry basically.”

  Mia spoke up, “I think Mike’s problem is that his mother makes so many good things that it is hard to choose. Remember Thanksgiving?”

  There was quite a few oohs and ahs in the group. Mia looked at Cid and Audrey and said, “I couldn’t eat anything but soup at the time, but these three put on ten pounds before supper was finished. I was so jealous.”

  Mike beamed. He was a momma’s boy and liked that Mia had honored his mother this way. “Ma does know her way around the kitchen.”

  “Speaking of kitchens, how is your tutelage going with Mia?” Burt asked Cid.

  “She can now make sausage without turning it into jerky.”

  The group clapped, and Mia stood up and bowed. Cid handed her an empty beer bottle as an award.

  “I accept this on behalf of all of you who I have poisoned in the past.”

  Cheers erupted from the men. Mia blushed and bowed once again.

  Audrey looked around and wanted this. She wanted more than anything to belong to this group of nutcases. She vowed to dig down and find the proof they needed to substantiate their theories. Then she was going to ask Burt and Mike for a job, or at least a consulting position with PEEPs. She, like Mia, had lofty goals.

  ~

  Audrey tapped Mia on the shoulder. The sprite turned around with a big grin on her face. “Yes?”

  “Would you think it was perverted of me to ask you to take me to the porn pit?”