The next several photos are close ups of a giant bug that looks to be a cross between a crab and a fly, old fence posts, a river full of kids on inner tubes, and a bunch of motorcycles in front of a bar with very old bikers standing around with their hands in their pockets. No text is offered to explain what or how any of them are connected to Dexter’s echo mystic or the supermall property.
The man’s not real good at a homework assignment, though I’ve never thought about telling clients they need to stick to the haunts and not mark up the photos. I place my hand over my phone and wait.
Those marks are like a car radio causing my sixth sense to go in and out of the reception area. Try as I might on each, I’m not getting much of anything. I close my eyes and click through until I feel a little spark coming from one. When I open my eyes, I’m not surprised to be looking at the snake tree photo, but I’m not looking at the snake.
I’m looking at the woman again who’s barely my age, mid-twenties if that. She’s got full puffy cheeks and an open mouth grin. She seems about the age Dexter’s daughter would be, if he has one. If he does, I sure hope this isn’t her since the woman’s pose is more than a little provocative. She could be his midlife crisis girlfriend or wife, but I don’t want that image in my head.
Considering all the other photos he threw in for my entertainment, I wonder now how seriously he’s taking this situation and if the inner tubers, bikers, woman, and snake are even on the property. Since I doubt there is a bar or a river in the middle of where a supermall is going, I have to assume he just forwarded me everything he had on his phone.
The photos are only confusing me, and I’m ready to delete them all but decide to give it another try. I close my eyes and steady my hand over the woman and the snake. I’m getting too many tingles for comfort. Then I get a zap that feels like I’ve made contact or my iPhone’s caught on fire. When I open my eyes, I see text that sure wasn’t there before: Remains found in woods. No sooner do I see the words than they’re gone.
Okay, so the woman and the snake were to get my attention so that I didn’t miss seeing the message. A possibility. When my eyes get too heavy to hold open, I turn off the light and try to see the message in my mind’s eye.
I’m not seeing anything close to Maybelle’s black magic or voodoo. Maybe she mistook them for Pentecostal snake handling. Knowing her, she told me those things so I’d let Levi tag along.
Dexter’s mist problem may turn out to be a lot simpler than I anticipated. Having your remains found in the woods is a good enough reason for anyone to do a haunting. Still, I’m not ruling out a little voodoo sleight of eye. The snake’s also the master of illusion. I’m tired enough to let in all sorts of trickster messages.
I’m also willing to accept the natural in this alleged supernatural situation. Most reported ecto-mists are nothing more than common fog or mist that are easily explained by weather conditions. In other cases, they’re smoke from camp fires. More times than not, they’re seen by amateur ghost hunters, moonshine drinking construction workers, and men who fraternize with women young enough to be their daughters.
Before Dexter and I finished our initial phone conversation, I asked him how the people in the area felt about having a supermall for a neighbor. That would be the obvious reason these old woods are now conveniently haunted. He assured me in a salesman’s huff that they were already lining up to get in the door. Then he got lost for a few minutes in his real estate broker boasting.
Space is filling up quick as beetle bugs. You can get anything you want and everything you need at half the price of other places. Rides for the kids, his and her restrooms, and fried pork feet on the stick.
After looking at the photos, ringed snake and bugs included, I have to consider that most locals would prefer to keep their bike trails and squirrel hunting grounds. Camp fire smoke would sure make this job quick and easy, and get Levi out of my jeep and back home where he belongs.
I just wish I hadn’t seen that message or heard the fear in Dexter’s voice, which was more likely the fear of getting bad press. He warned me not to talk to his fired workers. He claimed that due to their squabble, anything the men said would be more about retaliation than truth telling. I figure the warning is more about their combined male egos.
I roll over and try to get the woman out of my head so I can sleep, and she can send me a clearer message in my dreams. Just as I start to fall asleep, remains found in the woods is whispered in my ear. It’s too late; I pull the blankets over my head and ask her to check back with me in the morning.
∞
Levi wasn’t kidding about the biscuits and gravy breakfast. It’s all I can do to get my cereal down without gagging while sitting across from him at the truck stop diner.
“They serve that mess in prison?” I ask.
“Only on Tuesdays,” he says.
Levi’s the only one who ever really gets my sarcastic sense of humor. His comebacks never skip a beat and right now, I have to fight a grin off my face.
“You make it all right in there?” I ask, and regret acting like I care.
“Made a bunch of new friends,” he says, and kicks my foot under the table.
“You’re sick. Don’t give me any details.”
We split the bill and head to the jeep. We have about seven more hours on the road today, and Mojo is getting in his last stretches for awhile. Levi gets in the driver’s seat without a second thought.
“You getting any of your visions?” he asks.
I start to tell him about the message but stop. “Not getting much of anything.”
“No reason to lie, Jack. I can read you like a bag of Lipton tea. Maybelle already told me about the voodoo goings-on at that place. You’re not seeing shrunken heads are you? I like my head the size it is.”
“You watch too much TV,” I say, as he pulls onto the interstate. “Voodoo’s an ancient religious practice. Evil’s only in the eye of the beholder.”
“Only if your eye’s the one looking at the shrunken head as opposed to the one wearing it.”
“What I saw was the mischief of your average man and woman on the street. Ones who are more concerned about fattening their wallets and indulging their desires than waving chicken bones and hexing one another.”
Levi’s quiet for awhile. I can hear him thinking and have to block things I don’t think I care to know. Just when we’re back to peaceful silence, he speaks up.
“Is that the problem? You think I’m just one of those fattening his wallet types?”
“We’ve known each other since we were babies. I know who you are and what you want. I just don’t think I can give you those things.” I clear my throat and look out the passenger window until I can continue.
“This isn’t just my life, it’s my spiritual calling. You don’t ignore your gifts. If you have them, it’s your duty to use them.”
“I never once said you shouldn’t. Not once.”
“You didn’t have to say it, Levi. I hear you just fine.”
Chapter Eight
§
After a confusing online search to find a place to spend the night, we stop at the first motel we come to in Cathville. It reminds me of Alfred Hitchcock’s Bates Motel.
Levi steps out of the jeep and hollers, “Norman, we’re here.”
I swear the man can read my mind. He cautions Mojo about not getting himself butchered and stuffed by the psycho, and the traitor wolfdog thinks he’s hilarious.
The bulbs are burned out on the hotel’s sign. When we get close enough to the office to read it, I turn around and start back to the jeep.
“Norman’s Thrust Motel? What does that even mean?” Levi yells, and bursts out laughing. “Where you going? Come on, Jack. It’s too late to find another place to stay, and you can’t sleep in the jeep. You’re going to need a shower in the morning. Don’t let the name keep you from that, for everyone’s sake.”
He disappears inside the office and comes out a few minutes later with a
key. “Come on, now. They only had one room left. If you want a bed that includes bed bug bites, you better hurry up. I’m locking the door and not answering ‘till morning.” Mojo follows him to the room.
“I don’t believe you,” I yell to my unfaithful wolfdog.
After Levi goes in the room and shuts the door, I go to the office. Turns out he wasn’t lying about there being only one room left or about the bed bugs, but he did let me in when I knocked. The thought of Dexter’s motorhome in the woods is sounding better by the minute.
My first impression of Cathville besides the dive Thrust Motel is the smell of pork– smoked and barbecued– and the number of mosquitoes that found me as soon as I stepped out of the jeep. I coat myself and the room with bug spray and rose geranium essential oil. The combination is as lethal as nerve gas, but with a sweet peppery scent.
I carefully slip under the thin, yellowed sheet so as not to rip or touch it more than necessary, then I check the photos on my phone again.
“Those the photos of the voodoo property?” Levi asks.
“Echo mystic land,” I say.
“Let me take a look at those. Maybelle’s been teaching me psychometry.”
“You’re kidding. Since when?”
“If you’d stop avoiding me, you’d know what I’ve been up to. Pass them on over and I’ll give you my impression.”
“Okay, what’s your read on this one?” I’ve flipped to the woman with the snake on the tree. The creepy and ominous message isn’t back, for now anyway.
Levi closes his eyes and acts like a stage psychic; all that’s missing are his turban and a tin cup for coin offerings.
“White birch tree and a poisonous snake,” he says, after a few minutes.
“My heavenly spirit, you are psychic. What about the woman? You get anything on her that isn’t about your own sick desires.”
“What woman? And since when are my desires sick?”
“I’m talking about her physical endowment, which considering the size of the rest of her, I don’t figure is God given.”
Levi wrinkles his nose at me. “What woman? This photo?” He holds up the phone and there’s the woman pointing at the snake crawling up the tree.
“Stop playing. I got a weird vibe when I put my hand over it and a message too about remains found in the woods, but that part’s gone now.”
Levi looks back at the photo and gives me his serious face. “I’m not playing, Jack. I see dirt and leaves, a pole of a tree, a snake that could wrap itself around my neck six times, and that’s it. I’m not seeing any woman or weird message.”
I get out of bed and sit next to him. He watches my face as I flip through the photos until I get back to the one of her. “Right there,” I shout, and keep my finger on the woman as I turn the phone back to him. He looks at it and me.
“You better get back in your bed and get some sleep. We have to get up early in the morning.”
“You’re serious. You don’t see her, do you?” I say, mostly to myself.
“Cut back on the bug spray, okay?” he says, turning off the light and leaving me to stand in the dark and stare at the woman with the smiling face who’s pointing at the ringed snake.
∞
We get a late start the next morning due to sleeping through both our alarms. Levi assures the motel clerk that we do not want to reserve the room for another night.
The mosquitoes are still out to get me, and Mojo is doing his darndest to catch them in his mouth. Fearing the effects of more bug spray on the bugs he’s eating, I coat us both with essential oil. I swear he gives me a dirty look. I agree rose geranium and this pork smelling town doesn’t make a pleasing aroma.
We barely have time enough to stop at a hamburger joint for breakfast before my appointment at Joubert Realty, which I’m looking forward to being over with. I do my best to deal with my clients then get straight to what’s haunting them. Most times ghosts aren’t trying to scare people to death, and they don’t appreciate them getting all petrified anymore than I do. All of us are one wrong move from being ghosts ourselves, and a calm exterior goes a long way in opening the lines of communication.
We go down the main street, which is lined with shops that are probably as old as the town. I wonder how many of these shop owners are planning to move to Dexter’s supermall. Cathville is a town of less than thirty thousand. By the looks of it, I doubt even a third of them can afford to frequent a supermall no matter how cheap the kiddy rides and pork feet.
As soon as I turn onto Bella Street, I see a hotel that looks a hundred times better than Norman’s Thrust Motel. “Do you see that?” I say. After Levi swore he didn’t see the busty woman in the snake photo, I’m beginning to doubt my own eyes.
“The Belladonna? People in this town need to google things before they name them. I don’t see anything inviting about a place named after poisonous nightshade.”
“You do see it, good. I mean why didn’t I find it when I searched for motels in Cathville? We could have stayed there last night. It looks nice.”
“Maybe you should have searched for hotels too. What would have been nice was to not have listened to you snoring all night.”
“Motels, hotels, same thing,” I say.
Joubert Realty is another block down the road. I turn into a nice size parking lot in front of a well-maintained building with a fresh coat of new paint. I’m feeling a little better about this town and my client. Plus, I can barely smell the pork from here.
“You can wait in the jeep,” I tell Levi.
“No I can’t. I’m here about an excavation job. I have to meet the guy in case my parole officer checks with him.”
“If he checks with the man, he’s going to find out you don’t have a job here.”
Levi’s already out of the jeep and holding the office door open for me. There’s hysterical screaming coming from inside.
I rush in and hear a woman yell, “Somebody get me their gun, quick.”
The wolfdog went in ahead of me and has already met one of Dexter’s employees. “He’s harmless,” I say, grabbing him by the collar. “He’s just a dog,” I tell a very pale, older woman who’s one swing away from smacking me in the head with a dust buster.
“Looks like a dang wolf. Are you sure?”
“Positive. I’m Jack Raven. I have an appointment with Dexter Joubert at ten o’clock.”
“Well, now that there is a big problem,” the woman says, still watching Mojo.
“Why’s that?” I ask.
“Because he’s in jail for murdering Kylee, and he ain’t getting out anytime too soon.”
Chapter Nine
§
After meeting with Dexter’s office manager, Herb Harris, we find out that Dexter was arrested last night on suspicion of the murder of one of his real estate agents, Kylee Price.
“Falsely accused,” Herb yells, with a lackluster, eye twitching delivery. He shakes his head, throws his hands up in the air, and gives me the name of Dexter’s lawyer. Levi tries to get him to sign some note he wrote about his pretend excavation job.
“Leave my clients alone,” I say, once we’re back in the jeep. “Don’t get me involved in your scam cover story.”
“I can’t exactly say that I’m in Arkansas to help my girlfriend catch a ghost fog.”
“I’m your friend, not your girlfriend.”
“Friend, girlfriend, same thing. You know what? People sure talk slow in this town.”
We sit in the jeep while I call Dexter’s lawyer to find out how deep a hole he’s dug for himself. Emma Weaver is in court, but her secretary says I can come in at four o’clock.
“Doubt she’ll say much to you though. Client confidentiality and all,” she says, like I’m wasting everyone’s time, but mostly hers. “First fifteen minutes is free, after that it’s forty five dollars for each additional fifteen minutes.”
I tell her we won’t need any more than the first fifteen minutes.
“I say we keep the mone
y and head to Florida to catch some sun and surf,” Levi says.
“That’s not the way I do business and there is no we when it comes to my money.”
“Don’t you have an exclusion clause in your contract for murderers?”
“Never needed one before, but it might be something to add. I guess we better get rooms at the hotel, and I’ll see what I can find out about the mess Dexter’s got himself into. I have a feeling his echo mystic has been demoted to the bottom of his to-do list.”
We park at the Belladonna Hotel and go inside. It’s about a thousand times better than Norman’s place. Plus, they have plenty of rooms, which is both a relief and a stumper as to why people would prefer Norman and the bed bugs.
Levi dumps his stuff in his room then flops down on the bed in mine after turning on the TV and emptying the mini-bar of snacks.
I search on my laptop for news in Cathville. Dexter’s smiling salesman photo from his website is plastered on the front page of the Cathville Herald.
“Turn down the TV and listen to this,” I say. “Local real estate broker, Dexter Joubert, who was arrested for the murder of Kylee Price is expected to plead not guilty. He has been denied bail based upon the evidence found at the scene of the crime. The prosecutor says Ms. Price, who was a real estate agent in Mr. Joubert’s office, was found in the woods with a fist full of his hair clutched to her bosom. The—
“Bosom? It really says bosom? Who uses that word anymore? It’s like corset or garter or something. Bosom. Bosom.”
“Would you be quiet about it? It’s just a word. Listen to the rest of this. The successful real estate broker denies that Ms. Price was working on selling the property where her body was found. When asked why she had his hair in her fist, he shouted a foul word at the reporter and said that it wasn’t his, even after being told the police claim it sure enough was.”
“Sure enough was? Sounds like Joubert’s got a bigger problem than his echo mystic. She ripped his hair out of his head? Wow. Florida sounding better to you yet? I wonder why he didn’t take it from her once she was dead. Leaving behind all that DNA evidence is just plain stupid.”
The Cathville Haunting (Jack Raven Ghost Mystery Book 2) Page 4
