He’s naming, one by one, all the retailers that are lining up to get a space in his supermall, a place where I’m never going to shop. When he finally gets done and I’m busy thinking about what I’ll have for dinner, he gets back to the reason he called.
He starts by telling me about the surveyor and construction crew that went out to the property. Next he gives me the details on the surveyor, his wife’s cousin’s fifth husband, and the construction crew, biggest and best in the state and not cheap by anybody’s wallet.
Finally, he says the workers refused to come back and he taught them a lesson by firing all of them, which made his wife mad– about the surveyor anyway.
I’m beginning to feel like Hayley thought I was a good listener and he isn’t a potential client after all. When I’m thinking of ways to get off the call, he says he wants me to stay on the property in his motorhome until I can get rid of the thing.
I hate to ask exactly what the thing is because I think I probably missed that part when he was rambling about more than what interested me. But I have no choice, so I do. He tells me to hold on and I hear a door shut.
“Listen, Jack, I don’t want any more rumors getting spread than are already flying around this town. Rumors are deal killers, so I’ve got to know that I can trust you with what I’m about to say. I won’t tolerate you doing any interviews with the local reporters or gossiping with the girls at the beauty parlor. Do I have your word that everything I’m about to tell you is confidential?”
I assure him he has my word while hoping it means I’m getting off this call, now twenty eight minutes long.
I can tell that he’s cupped his hand around the phone and his lips are pressed against the speaker, making him sound like some undercover spy for the CIA. For a second, I fear he thinks I’m a different kind of eradicator– or he knows about Anna.
“What I have on that property of mine, which by the way is going to put this town on the map and make a whole bunch of people a whole bunch of money. So understand now that I’m doing this for them as much as for me.” Dexter stops and clears his throat.
“Well now, this thing I have is something they call a parallel normal echo mystic.”
Chapter Three
§
I nearly fall out of my chair and am doing everything I can not to laugh about Dexter’s parallel normal echo mystic. He doesn’t seem to notice I’ve said nothing beyond, “Uh huh.”
He’s already off on a new story about how after he fired the wife’s cousin’s fifth husband and the construction crew, he stayed out there in his car one full day and all night to catch whoever was trying to derail his supermall construction.
“You probably don’t know this,” he says, “but when it comes to shopping malls, your competitors can be downright fierce. Considering that this will be one super duper supermall, I expected some opposition. But this? It might be the work of one of them, but it ain’t… human.”
I agree that I didn’t know how mean spirited mall owners could be. He goes on, smugly satisfied that I’m older, by thirty seven minutes, and wiser, about a place where I’ll never shop.
After making me swear again that I will never tell a dead or living soul, he says he saw this fog or some kind of camping smoke that wasn’t like any fog or smoke he’s ever seen.
He says it was bluish or grayish with a little pink or rosy hue and maybe a little yellow in spots, but not spots themselves. It floated five, six feet off the ground– and this part he whispers so low I can barely hear him– “It came out of the trees and got right around my car like it wanted to swallow it up.” He yells swallow it up again for effect or from an adrenaline surge.
Dexter stops for a few seconds and it sounds like he’s drinking something, which I don’t get the vibe is water. In that ragged scotch voice, he tells me not to think he’s crazy or hyped up on some doggone street drugs, but he swears that echo mystic took on a thicker form and it had a… a face. He lets out all the air in his lungs, which sounds like he’s been holding in way too long.
I’ve never heard of an echo mystic and for awhile, my brain is working overtime. As soon as he gets into the very descriptive details of his problem, I know what he’s talking about is ecto-mist or a ghost vapor. These are unique apparitions attempting to manifest into a more solid form, but never getting farther than a dense mist.
I’ve never had the pleasure of working with one directly, but I assure Dexter I’m familiar with echo mystics. I think his term sounds much nicer than ecto-mist, so I don’t correct him. He’s sure glad to hear I’m an expert on the matter– according to him– and he lets out another one of those lung emptying exhales.
“Hayley spoke so kindly of you, Jack. I knew I could trust you. She can go on a spell and lose you on the way, but I can’t say I recall her telling me you’re a woman. Are you sure you can handle yourself in the middle of the Arkansas woods dealing with a thing like that? It nearly scared the pants off me, pardon the visual. I’ve got to know I can count on you not to go all dainty on me.”
“I’ve dealt with worse,” I say, and almost believe it. While Dexter goes on fussing about my delicate nature, I get on Google images to check out Cathville. This redneck town is scaring me a whole lot more than the echo mystic.
“All right then,” he says. “Let’s get down to business.”
As soon as the word business is out of the man’s mouth, I get an image of a used car salesman with a swirling aura that’s somewhere between fertilizer and rusty red. I’m hip deep in Dexter’s tractor pulling negotiations.
Forget my dainty nature– which no one has ever accused me of having– Dexter’s going for the juggler. He’s had a swallow of whatever it is he’s drinking then wants to know exactly how much this is going to cost him. I smile because with that attitude, the price just went up.
I start way high, he goes low, and we meet on my end of the middle. Ten minutes or so into it, we’re both happy; me a lot more than he’ll ever know. I promise I’ll hit the road tomorrow as long as his payment makes itself into my PayPal account by ten o’clock tonight. He gets all syrupy Southern on me for a minute or so and we finally disconnect.
“We’re going to Arkansas, Mojo.” He cocks his head like he wants me to reconsider. “I better get some bug spray and swing by the vet for something for you.” I swear he double-downs his amber stare on me.
First though, I check my email and Skype to see if Anna got back to me on her appointment– nothing on either. I flip another card from the tarot deck for her and get the Tower. The girl is doomed, but I say a prayer to help her through it– dead or alive.
When my phone rings again, I’m thinking things are picking up ghost-wise. Nope. It’s my dad, Arthur, the short-order cook.
“Hey, kiddo. Come by the diner for dinner. I’m making pizza.”
“I’m on a diet,” I say.
This shuts him up because, according to him, I don’t have an ounce of fat on me, and he knows I know why he’s calling, just like I knew the last six times he called– about Levi Cardona.
Levi’s been my on and off again boyfriend since junior high. Now he’s my ex-boyfriend and a newly released ex-con who Dad surprised me with when I got back from Roxbury.
“What father wants their daughter to be hanging around an ex-con?” I’d asked him. For some reason, Dad doesn’t think white collar crime is a real crime. “It’s not like he shot somebody. He’s just ambitious,” he’d said.
“Low fat pizza,” Arthur says, in his half-guilty, half-pleading voice.
“I’m getting ready to go out of town,” I say, changing the subject before it lands on Levi again.
“Where to this time?”
“I’m camping out in the backwoods of Arkansas to get rid of a real estate developer’s echo mystic.”
“Arkansas? In the woods? I don’t think that’s something you should be doing alone. You’ve heard of that movie Deliverance, right?”
As a matter of fact that’s exactly what I’d
been thinking when Dexter said he’d park his motorhome on his sixty acres, which he said is surrounded by another two hundred and forty acres of backwoods.
“That was in Georgia,” I say, after googling the movie since I was already checking my nicely fattened PayPal account.
“Same kind of people, Jack. Seriously, you can’t go to those back country places all by yourself. They’ve got their own versions of the law.”
“I’m not going alone. Mojo’s going. I know what you’re getting at and the answer is no. I’m done with Levi and not just because of the time he spent in prison or whatever disease he picked up while he was there. That boy’s been a thorn in my side since before I learned to walk. I’m moving on to bigger and better things.”
“Not in Arkansas you’re not. Come on. Come to the diner for dinner. You’ve been making yourself scarce since the holidays.”
That’s true enough. I’ve been doing everything I can to avoid Levi, which isn’t easy in a town where everyone knows us and thinks sharing what we’re up to is the thing to do.
“Is he there right now?” I ask.
“Who?”
“Don’t mess with me, Dad. You know who.”
“Levi? Boy, I sure don’t see him. Hey, Piper. You seen Levi today? Piper hasn’t seen him. I got artichokes for your pizza and tomatoes. A real new agey kind of pizza. I’m going to call it Jack’s Psychic Vision and put it on the menu.”
“Do that and I’ll have to shoot you. All right. Throw a steak on the grill for Mojo, and I’ll be there in an hour or so. But listen up, if I walk in the door and Levi’s there, know that I’m turning around and walking out so make sure you have a pizza box on hand. Dad?”
I think I can hear him whispering, but Mojo is doing his ghost growl again. I look around and feel something that raises the hairs on my arms.
“Hello? Anna? Is that you?”
Chapter Four
§
No sooner did I call out my tarot client’s name than the stick holding up the window came loose and the window slammed shut. “What’s up with that?” I ask the wolfdog, and I swear he shakes his head.
Before I go to the diner, I’m dropping Mojo off at the vet for some serious flea and tick prevention measures. This pleases him not in the least, but I promise a steak in a doggie bag when I pick him up and his attitude softens.
Miguel Cortez has been Mojo’s vet going on four years. That was when my dad delivered the ball of fur to my doorstep. The wolfdog has mixed feelings about Miguel.
I’ve known the man since the second grade, back when he called me Engine, alluding with the aptitude and innocence of a seven year old to my Native American heritage. That was long before political incorrectness was a thing, and I shudder to think of the things I called him in return. Way back then, my mom convinced me that he had a crush on me and that made knowing him even worse.
“Hey, Jack. Good to see you,” Miguel says, as I coax Mojo in the door. “Anything wrong with my favorite wolf?”
“Not at all. He just needs some professional protection from all kinds of bloodsuckers he’ll likely come across out in the boonies.”
“Where you headed to this time?” He raises his eyebrows and grins. Miguel’s also Levi’s closest friend and doesn’t mind passing on trivial matters about my activities or bragging that he does. Come to think of it, he’s still a brat. But with a beautiful wife and three kids, the crush thing isn’t an issue.
“I’m leaving for Arkansas tomorrow. We’re going to be hanging out in the woods for a few days. I thought Mojo should get something to battle the bugs.”
“Do ghosts haunt the woods? I thought they preferred to make their mischief indoors.”
“Echo mystics haunt the woods,” I say.
Miguel’s a believer. His grandmother Agustina, a good friend of my grandmother Maybelle, is a curandero: a healer, shaman, and to some, a witch doctor. To me she’s a wise elder and one of my most respected teachers. When an animal in the clinic is really sick, she comes in and does her healing work. She’s never lost a patient.
“Going by yourself?” he asks, without making eye contact.
“Of course not. I never eradicate the dead without the help of Mojo, The Great Ghost Tracker.”
“There are a lot of hunters in the Arkansas woods, and other types too.”
“There are a lot of other types in New Mexico. Just about anywhere you go, you’re bound to run into those other types.”
“You know what I mean. A young, attractive woman all alone. That’s almost asking for disaster.”
“Thank you for the compliment and the dazzling vote of confidence. I’ll be fine. You just make sure Mojo can handle whatever he might come across in those woods.”
“Won’t hurt to have a big, strong man at your side. I hear Levi has some free time on his hands these days.”
“Yeah, that’s because ex-cons have all sorts of trouble finding employment. Bye, Miguel. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
“Think about it,” he yells.
As I pull into the parking lot of Lacey’s Diner, I check for a shiny black Toyota Corolla– about the only thing Levi didn’t have to forfeit after his arrest for money laundering. The money laundering was something he claims happened because he was naively following his boss’ instructions. That argument wasn’t something the jury bought.
Unless he’s parked in the back, the diner is Levi-free.
As soon as I walk in the door, I spot Char. Her pink holiday hair is back to its usual sky blue. She works as a massage therapist at Heavenly Hands across the street so it’s not unusual to see her here, still I’m suspicious. Char’s a stand-by-your-man kind of woman– that is until the next one comes along. She’s in the middle of her third divorce. Being single isn’t a quality to which she aspires.
She points a long finger at me as soon as she sees me. “You’re just the person I need to talk to. I’ve come up with an idea that’s going to make us both rich and happy.”
“I’m already comfortable and happy. Why change what’s working? Hey, Dad,” I say going behind the counter. “How’s the new pizza oven working out? Better yet, let me try a large with extra cheese, and I’ll need a steak in a doggie bag.”
“Where’s Mojo? He too good to come in himself?” Arthur yells from the grill.
I head to a booth with Char following close behind. My dad’s already talking to a customer, something he spends most of his day doing.
“Miracle Massage and Medium,” Char says, with her fingers dancing in the air above her. “I give the massages and you contact the clients’ dead loved ones. It’s perfect.”
“At the same time? That could get awkward for everyone. I’m not seeing the connection between these two services.”
“Are you kidding? It’s a complete release and rejuvenation package. Body, mind, and spirits. That’ll be our slogan.”
“Who does the mind part?”
“Me. I work on the body to heal the mind. You conjure up the spirits to fully integrate the healing experience. It’s a natural, organic combination.”
This isn’t the first business Char’s come up with for the two of us, but it might be the weirdest. No, I take that back. The reflexology and ghost tours idea was by far the strangest. In Char’s defense though, it was wine inspired. I sense this idea too came to her after a couple of glasses, but I don’t ask.
She goes on for some time trying to convince me of her latest venture before she figures out she’s lost me to the pizza, which is almost good enough to put my name on the menu.
“Are you listening?”
“No. I’m eating… a little bit of artichoke heaven.”
“Speaking of heaven, are you still avoiding Levi?”
“In the same way I’m avoiding discussing him with you and everyone else.”
“So I guess that means he’s an available man. I mean in the marketplace, for one and all to shop and take home.”
Char’s always been a Levi fan. Most of th
e girls, now women, in Las Trebol have been at one time or another a fan of Levi Cardona. He’s good looking enough with his wavy hair, strong chin, and full lips that are always smiling. But he’s got something else: a sparkle in his eyes and an uncanny fire that can charm the socks off anyone– except those twelve people on the jury who convicted him.
“He’s all yours, Char. Knock yourself out over the guy. Just don’t complain to me afterwards.”
“If I thought you meant that I might, but I know you don’t. I need to get back for my next appointment. That new personal injury attorney in town? Well, he’s sending me all his car accident clients. I think he has a thing for me. He’s a little on the chubby side, but I’m not shutting the door all the way on him, yet. Plus, the money’s good. Insurance claims are a gold mine.”
Char spreads a thick layer of blue lipstick over her lips. “I want you to seriously think about my idea this time. I’m worried about you. It’s time you considered settling down. You’re not getting any younger, and the line of work you’re in? Well, girlfriend, I love you, but it’s taking its toll on you. The older you get, the older you look, the fewer who are going to be looking at you. You might like the attorney. Maybe I should introduce you two.”
“Please don’t,” I say, as she swipes a piece of my pizza and heads off.
“Afternoon, Maybelle.” Char’s holding the door open for my grandmother and making faces at me.
I get the urge to slip under the booth until the crazy old woman is gone. I love Maybelle more than my next breath, though sometimes she’s more wacko than wise. As I’m watching her, I get a glimpse of my future that Char was describing.
“Jack Raven. I know you’re in here. If you think you’re spending a week in the sticks of Arkansas alone, you better think again. Answer me, child, or I’ll use this cane of mine to knock the heads off everyone in this place until you’re the last one standing, or I step square in the middle of your dead body.”
The Cathville Haunting (Jack Raven Ghost Mystery Book 2) Page 2
