“Or else you’ll shoot us?” I ask, and hear Levi moan.
The guy in the back spits my way again.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I say. “You want to give us your names for the statement I just recorded?” I hold up my phone, hoping they know what one is. “Or will the local police know you by your voices and camouflage?”
I snap the camera about the time Billy-Bobby-Ray floors the pedal on his Ford and slings gravel in our general direction.
“Let’s get out of here before they come back,” I say.
“I’m already half way home,” Levi says, getting into the jeep. “I swear, Jack, one of these days you’re going to get us both killed with that smart-alecky mouth of yours. You were just asking them to shoot both of us.”
“Those type only shoot the men folk,” I say.
Chapter Fourteen
§
The next morning, we drive back to Dexter’s real estate office to meet the Noger brothers. It concerns me a lot that the premier real estate developers in the whole state don’t have their own office.
While Levi was cleaning out the mini-bar of little bottles last night, I was making notes for our meeting. I hope to find out what the brothers know about the ecto-mist including why Dexter avoided my question on if they’d seen it.
As bad as it was meeting all the local boys yesterday, they did raise some interesting questions. Like how far will they go to keep a supermall out of their woods? And is the black eyed man’s vapor the ecto-mist or something he’s smoking in his corn cob pipe? Or is it the man’s black magic conjuring ways to scare people off while conning Dexter into believing some echo mystic shot Kylee?
After Levi went back to his room, I tried to get a better sense of the energy the black eyed man sent me. Seeing those eyes and hearing that screechy voice in my mind did nothing but spin my head and stomach in circles.
Levi denied feeling anything weird coming from the guy or that his voice sounded anything more than hillbilly. Mr. PI couldn’t think past his disappointment in not getting a lead on the real murderer.
If I did experience a psychic attack, it passed quickly and without any lingering effects. Could have been due to the smudging I’d done to myself, and the black obsidian stone I’d held on to while sleeping. Whatever it was, I felt more rested and in better spirits this morning than I have since Levi showed up at my door back home.
The man spent the morning nursing a headache. He tried to cure himself with some junk food he got from a vending machine in the hotel. I just hope his efforts to calm his nerves last night slows his brain enough so he doesn’t ask too many dumb questions.
“Listen more than talk, okay?” I say, as I park in front of Joubert Realty. He grunts, a good sign that his nerves and brain cells are still slightly sedated. “Seriously, okay?”
“I hear you. Despite your trash talking me, Jack, I’m not stupid. Sounds to me like the Noger brothers are working a supermall scam on Dexter by moving into his office and working his money into their pockets. Enough to kill a nosy real estate agent? That’s what I guess we need to find out.”
“I’m a little suspicious myself.”
“Now take your own advice and watch that mouth of yours. Let’s agree with everything they say so they keep talking and step knee deep into whatever’s going on, or better yet, let slip a confession.”
“Well, not necessarily everything they say. Don’t go all private investigator on me either. I still haven’t decided to let you pretend to be one on my job here. I’m going to be asking questions about the haunting so I can do what I was hired to do, if I can do it. I’m afraid that sick feeling I had yesterday is proving Maybelle right. Dexter’s echo mystic might actually be black magic, and there’s nothing I can do to eradicate that stuff.”
We go into the building and are pointed towards Dexter’s office by the receptionist. Levi taps on the door and opens it at the same time with a wink to me. It’s those PI websites he’s been surfing that are giving him a crafty edge.
His trick works because we catch one of the brothers with his fingers in Dexter’s filing cabinet.
“Matt Noger,” the older looking of the two says. He moves from behind the desk to the door so he’s blocking our view of his brother’s goings-on just before we hear the cabinet drawer slam shut.
“Levi Cardona.” Levi extends his hand before I can get out a syllable. “This is Jack Raven and Mojo.”
Matt introduces Tommy, who I swear has a little rose hue forming on his oddly round face. He sits in a chair next to Matt, who has taken control of Dexter’s desk, and Levi and I get uncomfortable in stiff back chairs in front of them.
“So you’re a ghost hunter,” Matt says, leaning back in his chair. Tommy giggles.
“Some people use that term,” I say. Levi kicks my foot.
Tommy’s face gets redder; a grin is stuck on him. Matt clears his throat and leans forward. “We don’t mean any disrespect. We just aren’t inclined to believe in such things. Still,” he says, raising his hand, “Dexter thinks there’s something out there and so do a bunch of other men. Men who aren’t the type to get fooled by folks playing games with them.”
“I take it neither of you have seen anything out there,” I say.
Tommy’s goofy grin fades, and Matt confirms they haven’t.
“I’m not convinced myself. What do you think the problem is?” I ask.
Matt seems to relax a little. Tommy squirms in his seat. If these two are premier, I wonder what run-of-the-mill looks like.
“Just the locals and their nonsense,” Matt says, leaning back again and puffing out his chest.
“We went out to the property yesterday and met some of those locals,” Levi pipes up. “One claims there’s a vapor. Ever hear of someone named Morowa?”
“Folktale nonsense,” Tommy says. He’s got his arms around his plump stomach, giving himself a hug.
Matt nods at him. “Backwoods hillfolk have their superstitions and stories to explain their own fears and probably their boredom too. What’s out there is most likely fog or somebody’s camp fire smoke. We’ve been on the property a dozen or more times and never saw anything.”
“I appreciate your honesty,” I say. “As soon as I can confirm that, I’ll be on my way home. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of days if that’s the case. Were you able to move Dexter’s motorhome onto the property? The sooner I can get started, the sooner I’ll be gone.”
“Motorhome.” Tommy snickers under his breath. The man, who’s probably in his early thirties, is either stupid or high on skunk weed.
“Sent someone to do that already. I’ll double check to be sure, but I guarantee it will be done today,” Matt says. He laces his fingers and locks eyes with me.
“We want you to understand that we’ve sunk a good deal of money into this project. We don’t want any old witch tales bankrupting it. We’ve agreed on you being here so we can put our workers’ minds at ease. We don’t want this to turn into some spookfest like they have on those TV shows. Keep the special effects down, if you don’t mind. Just confirm what we already know is fact, and we’ll wish you a safe trip home.”
“Wait a minute,” Levi says. “Dexter asked us to look into the matter of Kylee Price’s murder while we’re here. We were hoping you could shed some light on that subject too.”
I grimace at Levi but don’t try to stop the conversation. Matt seems pretty level headed and I’m curious if he can stay that way while discussing the murder. Almost as curious as I am about whether Tommy can stick his foot in the middle of things. Right now, the man’s looking like he ate a bug.
“We need to leave that matter up to the police. It’s a shame about what happened to that woman,” Matt says.
“But?” Levi asks.
“No buts about it. Dexter is our business partner. What he did or didn’t do is up to the police to determine and the court to decide.”
“Seems that would concern you more than it appears to be d
oing.” Levi says. He’s got some kind of PI gotcha grin on his face, which I almost missed because I was watching Tommy squirm out of the corner of my eye.
“Whether Dexter is innocent or guilty, the Cathville Supermall is still getting built. While I can assure you of that, I won’t go into any of the details about our business dealings with Dexter or anyone else. We want you to do what you came here for, but we’d appreciate you staying out of Dexter’s legal troubles so you don’t end up with troubles of your own.”
“What kind of troubles?” I ask, beating Levi to the question.
“A woman was murdered. That’s trouble enough for anyone.”
Levi’s got his arms crossed, and I can hear his brain chatter before he speaks. “The two of you wanting to keep out of this matter is fine by us. We won’t be going into our business dealings with Dexter either, and we’d appreciate you keeping that in mind.”
Tommy’s eyes get big. Matt stands up and walks to the door. “We’ll make sure the trailer gets on the property by this afternoon,” he says, before turning back to me. “You said a couple of days to get this wrapped up. Let’s hope it doesn’t take any longer than that.”
Chapter Fifteen
§
Matt watches us walk out the door and get into the jeep. I raise my hand and wave, and he nods without a smile then disappears with clusters of dirty pink and gray energy following: a clear sign of a worried liar. Seems the brothers are just fine with Dexter in prison while the supermall project proceeds without the man. So I wonder what’s keeping Matt up at night.
“I need this, Jack,” Levi says. “Ghosts are your calling, and helping people wrongly accused of a crime stay out of prison is mine. Now that I’ve been on the inside, I want to keep others from suffering the way I did.”
“You sound like you’re trying out for a reality TV show. I thought you said you made new friends in the pen.” Levi ignores me.
“Can you believe that guy? And what’s up with the chubby one? He on some kind of idiot pills? I think those two set Dexter up. Even going so far as committing one deadly sin in order to reap the fruits of another. I can’t figure out how they got a clump of his hair though. I need to talk to Weaver about that.”
“Just how long have you heard this calling of yours?” Levi shoos his hand in my face. “Sunday school lessons aside, you mean they killed Kylee so Dexter would end up in prison and they would get all the supermall profits.”
“It does sound like they have things in order to get it built without him. What a coincidence.”
“There’s one little problem with that theory: Mrs. Joubert,” I say. “She would be entitled to Dexter’s share no matter what ends up happening to him.”
“Unless she signed a contract that cut her out of the deal. We need to talk to Dexter about this and let him know what the Noger brothers are up to, if he doesn’t know already. He should have told me about these two and their financial voodoo tricks. They have motive number one: money.”
We go back and forth like this while I drive to the place where Levi can finally get his chocolate gravy and biscuits.
My argument is that no woman would exclude herself from her share of her husband’s profits. None that I know of anyway, but I have to agree that– if Matt Noger’s telling the truth– they have a contract that’s custom designed for the fix Dexter’s in.
We decide that after we eat, I’ll drop Levi off at the jail so he can snitch on the Noger brothers while I go to the assessor’s office in nearby Elmar. I need to do research on the property and figure out who might be doing the haunting. It’s hard to get rid of a spirit when you don’t know who it was in life or what problems it’s hanging onto.
First though, I want to make sure the motorhome is moved onto the property. I didn’t include the hotel bill in Dexter’s quote. If the motorhome isn’t there, I’m putting Levi in charge of renegotiations– assuming he can stick to my script, while doubting he will.
I also need to see if I can get a sense of Kylee and the vapor named Morowa. Hopefully this time without any redneck visitors.
In all my years sending apparitions to the afterlife, I’ve never encountered black magic or voodoo. That’s why I need to find out something about the property’s history from a more reliable source than the internet. What I found on forums and blogs about the Ozark hillfolk and their use of witchcraft and magic was downright primitive.
The rituals for treating illnesses were unconventional and sometimes included animal parts used in the most disgusting ways. There were remedies for the troubles caused by everything from dropping a dishrag on the floor to sneezing on certain days of the week. Of course, there were warnings that made perfect sense, such as not throwing dirt in a ghost’s face– never a good idea.
Superstitions is what the more academic websites called the hillfolks’ beliefs and practices, but I know that’s just a word used when science doesn’t offer a more reasonable explanation. Cathville isn’t Appalachia country but according to the websites, a few hillfolk found their way here. I want to know if any of them once did or still do own nearby land.
The creepy, black eyed man sure seemed like a long lost relative of an Ozark clan. One website described them as deliberately unprogressive people who avoided the outside world. I would say those words describe at least his physical appearance well enough. Plus, the teenage boys were way too nervous when he found them talking to a couple of outsiders.
We park down the street from the Pork Heaven Waffle Griddle and Saloon, which just might be fifty percent of the reason this town smells like baked, fried, roasted, and barbecued pig. We find a booth and wave back at the waitress.
Unlike the backwoods boys, the people in town couldn’t be more friendly. I offer my ghost eradication services in all fifty states and Canada. Rarely have I found a more welcoming bunch of people than in Cathville. They’re the kind of people who don’t know a stranger. That suits Levi just fine because no one is working harder for one-third of nothing than he is.
“This is my last fried meal,” I say, after ordering half of all the fried food on the menu including more deep fried pickles, which I’m now considering an addiction that may need an intervention. My psychic senses are drowning in grease.
Levi’s expectations were high, but his morning after the mini-bar stomach won’t let him order the chocolate gravy. He opts for bacon stuffed waffles with a side of bacon and eggs. My cholesterol is going up just watching him eat.
An hour later and after my third cup of muddy coffee– they don’t do lattes in Cathville– I let Levi drive while I hang my head out the window.
He managed to ask half the people at the Waffle Griddle if they knew Dexter Joubert and the other half if they knew Morowa. Five of those people actually gave him contact information so he could annoy them again. Right now, he’s more hyped up than my clogged arteries can stand. He’s sure he’ll have this case wrapped up in a couple of days.
“I doubt they gave you real contact information,” I say, but I’m sure it got lost in the wind that’s blowing my long hair in knots. As soon as Levi parks in front of the property, I stumble out of the jeep like a fried and pickled junkie.
“Tracks,” Levi yells, as only an unskilled investigator could. We follow the tire treads, which go a little too far back into the woods. Still, I can almost see the police tape.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” I say. I’m staring at maybe, if I’m lucky, a twelve foot box of battered and rusted tin on balled tires; also known as, in Dexter’s mind anyway, a motorhome. “I hope you brought that tent because you’re not sleeping in there with me.”
“You should have asked to see a photograph before you agreed to these accommodations. And no, I don’t have a tent, so yes, I am sleeping in there with you and Wolf. I hope the windows open for the sake of all three of us.”
“They probably don’t.”
“You know, Jack, after meeting those rednecks yesterday, you should be on your knees thanking me for ev
en considering staying on this property with you.”
“Why don’t you go back to town and buy a tent?”
Levi’s at the door. He slips a piece of paper out from under the handle. “Maybe we should go back to town and buy a gun.”
Chapter Sixteen
§
Levi insists that we don’t need to call the police about the note left in the trailer’s door handle. That is until he’s struck by the brilliant idea that doing so will get his foot inside the station, this time on the right side of the law. His brain is firing bull’s eyes on ways to jump start his new pretend career.
He makes a face as he goes to put the note in his wallet.
“Hey, what’s it say?”
“You don’t want to know. Just a prank by the locals. It says, Gets out of tound or you gets some serius boody harm.” He slumps, shakes his head, and hands me the note. “What are they going to do? Spank us?”
“I think they mean body, not booty,” I say, but I’m not really sure. Either way, I’m even less thrilled about staying in Dexter’s trailer than I was minutes ago. As soon as Levi opens the door, we have yet another reason to suppress our excitement about our adventure in the Arkansas woods.
“Whoa, smells like… I don’t know. Dirty socks?”
“More like dead skunk,” I say, swinging the door wide and finding a stick to hold it open. Then I add cleaner and air freshener to my list of things that are burning through my earnings.
“Find some way civil to entertain yourself. I need about a half hour to see if I can get any sense of what’s going on in this place. When I’m done, we’ll split up and get this party rolling.”
“You want me to follow you around?”
“Not unless you want to get yourself some serious boody harm.”
I take off in the direction of the police tape, but my eyes are scanning the hill above it. Mojo’s more interested in something slithering through the brush, so I figure the black eyed man isn’t watching my every move.
The Cathville Haunting (Jack Raven Ghost Mystery Book 2) Page 7
