Red Velvet Waffle (The Diner of the Dead Series Book 15)

by Carolyn Q. Hunter

  “They had to get the maintenance man to saw through the chain. When they finally went inside—”

  “They found him dead.”

  Frank nodded. “I’m very sorry, I know he was a friend of yours.”

  “I’ll need to call Maddy,” she said. “She was the closest thing he’s ever had to family. She’ll want to know.”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” he agreed. “Why don’t you go do that now while I take care of everything here?”

  “All right,” she replied, hugging him tight and turning to walk away from the gathering crowd.

  Pulling out her phone, she was about to dial when she noticed Corrie Bennett—large bug-eyed sunglasses, a sun hat on her head, and the same necklace around her neck—walking across the parking lot.

  “What is heaven’s name has happened now?” she complained. “I’m in charge of a ladies’ tea this afternoon and it’s supposed to take place in the ballroom here.”

  “Someone’s dead,” Sonja informed her, not in the mood to deal with the town gossip.

  “Dead,” she paled. “Who?”

  Sighing, she shook her head. “Benjamin, if you must know. He hung himself.”

  Corrie’s mouth dropped open so wide that her glasses almost toppled off the tip of her nose. “He’s dead?”

  “That’s what I told you,” Sonja grumbled.

  “How did this happen?” she looked sick with honest worry, playing nervously with the diamond at the end of her necklace like it was a habit.

  “Well, Sheriff Thompson thinks that the stress of the farm being haunted was too much for him,” Sonja embellished upon what Frank had told her, drawing her own conclusions.

  “He was scared . . . to death?”

  “I suppose you could say that,” she shrugged. “But shouldn’t this be a good day for you?”

  Corrie took off her glasses and looked at Sonja straight on. “What is that supposed to mean?” She sounded sincerely hurt.

  “You wanted the farm, right? Now, maybe you’ll get a real chance to snap it up. If Benjamin doesn’t have a will, the farmland reverts to the city. You could probably get it for cheap.”

  “What a horrible thought,” she exclaimed. “What kind of person would think about business at a time like this?”

  “I assumed you would,” Sonja accused.

  “Well, I’ll have you know I’m appalled by his death. It’s true, I wanted his farmland, but I would never wish someone dead.”

  “Maybe not, maybe that wasn’t your intent,” Sonja pressed the boundaries of the conversation, seeing if she could sense any hint of guilt from the woman.

  “Are you suggesting I had anything to do with this?” she huffed, putting her glasses back on, “I can assure you, I did not.”

  “I know,” Sonja agreed, “but I’m just saying maybe your harassment about selling the farm only added to his stress.”

  At this accusation, Corrie looked truly upset. “Do you think it might have, you know, pushed him over the edge?”

  “I’m not saying it pushed him over the edge, but sometimes we need to be careful what we say to people.”

  “Oh my,” she gasped. “Oh my, oh my.” holding her hand up to her face, her eyes beginning to mist up, she ran off.

  Sonja knew she’d really upset the woman and felt bad for it, but she wanted someone to blame and Corrie was an easy scapegoat. It was unfair, and Sonja decided to apologize later, maybe take Corrie out for coffee.

  She was a gossip, but she wasn’t horrible.

  Suddenly, remembering what she was originally doing, she scrolled through her contacts list and tapped on Maddy’s name.

  She waited a second for the call to connect and then begin to ring. To Sonja’s surprise, someone else’s phone nearby began ringing as well. Turning, she spotted a familiar young woman standing near a car with Idaho plates.

  It was her phone that was ringing. When she answered and said “hello” Sonja could hear it through her line.

  CHAPTER 11

  * * *

  “Maddy?” Sonja called, walking over to the woman next to the car.

  The young woman jumped and removed her sunglasses to reveal her face. “S-Sonja,” she stuttered. “You scared me.”

  “Maddy, what are you doing in Haunted Falls?”

  “I-I,” she stumbled over her own words before finally breaking into tears. “I came to help Ben,” she moaned, “but I’m too late.”

  Instinctively, Sonja embraced her friend who she hadn’t seen in a year in her arms. “It’s okay. You tried.”

  “When he called me yesterday morning, he told me not to bother making the trip out and that he’d ask you for help instead.”

  “But you came anyway.”

  “I got here late last night and checked into the hotel. I was planning on going out to the farm this morning and seeing him, and now I can’t.”

  “I know. It’s unsettling,” Sonja agreed.

  “I should have warned him, told him to do something more.”

  “Warned him?” Sonja asked, pulling away and looking in Maddy’s eyes.

  “The ghost,” she gasped, “I knew it was malicious.”

  “Why would it be malicious?”

  “Well,” she gulped, “if the ghost really was our old crew member from the TV show, you remember Spook?”

  “How could I forget?” Sonja sighed thinking of the pompous young man before he died tragically in the barn.

  “If it’s really him, he might blame us—me and Ben, I mean—for his death. He might have killed Ben.”

  “Maybe,” Sonja agreed. “But how could a ghost get power like that, enough power to strangle someone? And if it is Spook, why wait this long to kill him?”

  “I-I don’t know,” she wondered out loud. “I just know I had a bad feeling about what he told me and came down as soon as I could.”

  Sonja was having a hard time believing that Spook, an old co-worker of both Benjamin’s and Maddy’s, would suddenly find a thirst for vengeance after death—despite his self-righteous attitude when he was alive.

  She could, however, believe a ghost had committed the murder. Moreover, remembering the chalk outline, she thought that someone living was ultimately driving the ghost to murder.

  “Come on,” Sonja said. “I know someone who can maybe help us answer a few questions.”

  * * *

  For what felt like the hundredth time, Sonja found herself in the creepy room of the local library with volunteer librarian Belinda Smith. She was the richest woman in town but spent most of her days humbly sorting books and helping patrons.

  Sonja and Belinda were close friends, and she had gone to her for help on many occasions when she needed to know something about witches, ghosts, or any other supernatural topic.

  “Belinda Smith knows more about the occult than anyone in Haunted Falls,” Sonja informed Maddy as they took seats around the tiny table in the cramped room. “If there is a ghost responsible for Ben’s death, she’ll help us figure it out.”

  The walls of the room were lined with old books about the occult, and they were kept out of the public eye purposefully.

  “O-Okay,” Maddy nodded. “If you say so.”

  “I do know what I’m talking about,” Belinda, dressed in a black spider lace blouse and wearing a Victorian choker, assured the young woman, patting her hand. “Now, tell me more about what happened.”

  Sonja went into the details, explaining each element of the strange occurrences at the farmhouse, the whispered death threat in the night, the events of the night before, and finally Ben’s death. Maddy added little details where she could, mostly about Ben’s phone call to her.

  “This sounds like one malicious ghost,” Belinda noted. “Or ghosts.”

  “Ghosts? Plural?” Maddy asked.

  “Multiple people have died there,” Sonja noted “And last night we saw three ghosts. One on the stairs and two in the barn—all places where each of them died.”

  “I see,”
she nodded. “Do you think multiple ghosts were in on it? The murder I mean?”

  “We don’t know if it was murder yet,” Sonja mentioned. “The ghosts could have just driven Benjamin insane, nothing else.”

  “That’s still murder in my book,” Maddy shared.

  “As in mine,” Sonja nodded. “But we can’t exactly prove that can we?”

  “And we can prove a ghost committed a murder?” Belinda added skeptically.

  “Good point,” Sonja responded.

  “The more important thing here is, was someone living involved?” Belinda asserted.

  At this, Maddy sat up straight with avid interest. “You think someone who is alive did this?”

  Belinda nodded. “The big clue here is that the ghost probably left its domain to kill our victim.”

  “Domain? What does that mean?” Maddy asked. Despite being a TV psychic and medium, she honestly didn’t know a lot about real occult matters. Most of The Spook Show had been fake.

  “A ghost, when it chooses to stick around and haunt a place, treats the location like its domain. There is some debate over this, but some people believe that a ghost is actually physically tied to the place they died,” Belinda explained.

  Maddy shifted in her chair. “Well, what do you think?”

  “Belinda believes that any ghost can do anything if it just has enough spiritual energy feeding into it,” Sonja answered, having had similar discussions before. “In my experience, that’s true.”

  “How does a ghost get energy?”

  Belinda opened an old book on the table. “Sometimes, when a grudge or hatred grows strong enough, a ghost can attach itself to someone and travel to a new location.” She pointed at a picture in the dusty tome revealing a skeletal figure riding on someone’s back. “Sort of like piggybacking.”

  “And you think that someone,” she swallowed and looked at Sonja, “like you or the sheriff carried the ghost to the hotel?”

  Sonja shrugged. “It’s possible,” she glanced at Belinda knowingly. “But, I think that this is something else.”

  “Another explanation,” Belinda continued, turning the page, “is that someone has communicated with the ghost and is feeding it energy.” She pointed at a picture of a witch kneeling in a circle, waves of energy going from her body into a floating ghost above her. “They ask the ghost for favors, and in return grants it energy.”

  “And this is why I’m more inclined to believe it’s the second option,” Sonja announced, pulling out her phone and opening the picture app. “In the barn, I took pictures of a circle that was in the dirt there,” she handed the phone to Belinda.

  Carefully scrolling through the images and examining them one by one, Belinda raised both eyebrows. “I see.” She held one of the clearer images next to the book. “The runes look the same.”

  “So, it’s true?” Maddy gasped, looking from the book to the phone and back again.

  “It seems so,” Belinda nodded. “Someone in Haunted Falls is behind Ben’s death.”

  “Which means one thing,” Sonja said. “This was definitely murder.”

  CHAPTER 12

  * * *

  After dropping Maddy back off at the hotel, Sonja decided she needed to pay Frank a visit. She knew she couldn’t very well tell him that Ben was murdered by someone controlling a ghost, but she figured she should be able to convince him to dig a little deeper into what was happening at the farm.

  The only person Sonja could think of who might want Benjamin out of the way was Corrie Bennett. Also, she had some difficulty imagining a woman like Corrie drawing chalk circles in the dirt to communicate with ghosts.

  Parking out in front of the police station, the amateur sleuth trotted up the steps and into the building. “Hi, Marie,” Sonja greeted the receptionist.

  “Hiya, hon,” the older woman with purple dyed hair smiled.

  “Is Frank in?”

  “Sure is. He’s in his office right now.”

  “Thanks,” she said, walking in.

  “Sonja,” Frank smiled upon seeing his girlfriend. “What can I do for you?”

  Taking a seat across from him, she leaned forward on the desk. “I wanted to talk more about Benjamin.”

  Frank sighed. “Please tell me you haven’t dug up something else.”

  “Not necessarily,” she admitted “It’s more of a gut feeling.”

  “And you feel that he was murdered. Am I right?”

  She nodded. “That’s exactly right.”

  “We’ve gone over this. He committed suicide. It’s an open and shut case.”

  “But why would he commit suicide?” Sonja pressed, hoping to pique his interest in reopening the case. “It doesn’t seem like Benjamin to me.”

  “Well, there could be a number of reasons,” he admitted. “But it seemed he was most disturbed and upset by the events happening around his farm.”

  “And you yourself mentioned that those events may be the work of an elaborate prankster.”

  “Sonja,” he sighed. “Do we really need to go into all of this?”

  “Just bear with me,” she urged him, holding up both hands to tell him to be patient.

  “Alright, alright,” he nodded. “What about the prankster? I thought you believed it was a ghost?”

  “That’s not the point,” she said. “The point is, it could have been a prank, a very mean prank.”

  Frank’s face became softer as he began to realize where she was going with all of this. “Wait, are you saying you think someone purposefully drove him to it by making him think he was being haunted?”

  “That’s right,” Sonja said. “Which verifies my previous assumption—this is murder.”

  “Okay, but you understand we’d have to find evidence of the fake haunting first, to show that someone really was doing things around the farm to force him to the edge, and that it wasn’t just in Benjamin’s head.”

  Sonja’s jaw dropped. “Can you really say that this was all in Benjamin’s head after what you saw last night?”

  “Honestly, I’m not sure what I saw last night,” he admitted with a shrug. “A shadowy shape on the stairs? A silhouette in the barn? Those could have been tricks of my mind.”

  “But they weren’t tricks, Frank. I was there. I saw them too.”

  “There is such a thing as group paranoia.”

  “Group paranoia?” Sonja gasped. How could he really say that after all the things they saw and the discussions they’d had?

  “Yes, you and I stayed the night at the farmhouse. We both heard Benjamin’s story and we both, in some part of our minds, bought into what he said.”

  “And we imagined it all?” she felt herself getting hot and angry again. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes, that’s what I’m saying,” he nodded sternly.

  “I can’t believe this,” Sonja said, standing up. “I thought for sure I’d get your help, especially since you were the one who thought it was all a prank in the first place.”

  “Sonja,” he spoke quietly. “Just calm down.”

  “This has nothing to do with Benjamin. You’re scared,” she accused.

  “No, I’m not,” he laughed nervously, betraying himself. “I’m not scared.”

  “You’re afraid of what you might learn if you dig deeper into the Hinkley Farm. You’re afraid you might find something, once and for all, that proves to you that ghosts exist.”

  “I doubt that would happen,” he defended.

  “That’s why you declared it a suicide so quickly. You’re just too scared to look and see if someone was gaslighting Benjamin because you know you might find out that maybe, just maybe, ghosts are real—and that may be too much for you.” She tightened her lips. “You know this was murder and you’re going to just sit here and do nothing about it.”

  “Sonja please,” he begged.

  “No, Frank,” she whispered. “I always looked up to you because you were the kind of guy who would bend over backward to solve
a crime, to bring a little more peace and justice to the world. You were the man who always tried to do the right thing.” Stomping a foot in protest, she shook her head. “You were always the one to look fear in the face.”

  “There are no ghosts,” he finally exploded. Standing up, his voice shaking the room; his face was red and sweaty.

  Unfortunately, behind the mask of anger, she could see the truth in his eyes. He was scared and didn’t want to deal with the case any longer.

  “I’ve never been more disappointed in you in my life,” she whispered.

  Instantly, his charade deflated and he sat back in his chair with his elbows on the desk and his hand in his face.

  She turned and walked out the door.

  “Sonja?” Marie asked, seeing the woman charging by. “Is everything okay?”

  “No, Marie, it’s not. We’ve got a scaredy-cat for a sheriff.”

  Realizing that she wasn’t going to get Frank’s full support on this investigation, she knew what she had to do next. She would need to stay at the farmhouse again that night, by herself, to see if she could potentially draw out the ghost—or ghosts—from their hiding place.

  Maybe then she’d get some answers.

  CHAPTER 13

  * * *

  The sky was darker than the previous night, the light of the moon obscured behind large dark clouds. The occasional flash of lightning illuminated their monumental shapes upon the horizon, and Sonja knew it would rain soon.

  “Of course,” she whispered as she packed up the back of her van. “It wouldn’t be a proper ghost hunt without a big old thunderstorm.”

  She shivered even thinking of spending the night alone in the creepy old farmhouse, listening to the crack of the thunder and the pelting of rain upon the rooftop.

  Maybe no ghosts would show up? Maybe it would be an uneventful and fruitless evening?

  Sonja knew better.

  She was in for a night of horrors she would never forget, but if it meant clearing up the mystery behind Benjamin’s strange death, then she had to do it.