Possessed (A Jenny Watkins Mystery Book 7)

by Becky Durfee

  “This is where I was drawn,” Jenny proclaimed as she turned off her car.

  “This is insane,” Zack observed.

  “Agreed.”

  “What are you feeling?” Zack asked. “Anything?”

  Shaking her head, she replied, “Not at the moment.”

  He looked out the passenger window at the ramshackle house and equally run-down surrounding buildings. “This place looks like it’s been here since the dawn of time. Does it even have indoor plumbing?”

  “It doesn’t look like it would.” Jenny did notice a well and a windmill on the property, as well as vast expanses of gardens. Chickens and goats roamed around freely, and the clothing on the line blew in the breeze. The significance of the location, however, remained elusive as they quietly contemplated for a moment in the car.

  “I want to pet one of those goats,” Zack finally announced, out of the blue.

  Jenny’s attention became drawn to the little animals, who jumped and frolicked playfully, unaware that they had spectators. She had to admit that she would have liked to pet them, too, although she chose to stay focused on the matter at hand. “I want to figure out why we’re here...” She looked around. “And I’d also like to figure out where here is.”

  Checking his phone, Zack informed her, “I don’t have any bars.”

  “Well, that sucks,” she replied as she searched in every direction for some clue about of where they were; all she could see were these buildings and the surrounding property. She didn’t even see any telephone poles that would have been indicative of electricity.

  “Why don’t you drive back the way we came, and I’ll look and see where we are once I get some bars.”

  Jenny wordlessly started the car and turned around, giving one last glance at the house over her shoulder as she drove down the barely-recognizable path her car had traveled on the way in. She was being given no indication of what role the house would play in the investigation, but she imagined it was significant if she had been drawn there.

  Zack’s eyes stayed glued to his phone as the car ventured back down the narrow strip of matted grass. Once they returned to the asphalt, Jenny asked, “Do you have anything yet?”

  “Nope.”

  After a few minutes, however, he announced, “Hey…I’ve got a bar.”

  “Excellent. Need me to pull over?”

  Zack grunted in a way that let Jenny know it wasn’t necessary. He scrutinized his phone before declaring, “I believe we are officially in Bumfuck, Georgia.”

  “Bumfuck?”

  “Not a real place,” he clarified. “It’s just a much-less-classy way to say we are in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Great. How is it this trip keeps leading us to places with no names?”

  “Luck.” Zack manipulated the screen with his finger. “Just plain old luck.” He alternated between looking at his phone, Jenny’s odometer and the scenery, trying to get a feel for exactly where they were. Once Jenny pulled up to an intersection, Zack announced, “Got it. We were about six miles past Marvin’s Mill Road on Route 3236. That’s about the best way I can describe it.”

  Jenny remained quiet as Zack continued to play with his phone. “What are you doing now?”

  “Looking up the closest police station.”

  “Police station?”

  “Yup,” he declared. “I figure we can go there and ask if anything substantial happened there back in the sixties.”

  Remembering how much more useful people were than websites the last time, she said, “That is a great idea.”

  Zack told Jenny how to get to the station, which turned out to be a good twenty minutes from where they had been. By the time they arrived, Jenny was more than grateful to get out of the car; her backside had been getting numb. Pregnant bellies and long car rides didn’t mix very well.

  The police station was small, as expected, and the couple was able to walk in without having to pass through any security measures. Zack approached the desk first, addressing the older gentleman sitting behind it. “Hi,” he began, “I was wondering if you could tell me if anything significant happened at a location six miles past Marvin’s Mill Road on route 3236 back in the sixties.”

  The gray-haired officer looked suspiciously at Zack. “You ain’t from around here, are you?”

  “No, sir.”

  Leaning back in his chair and interlacing his fingers across his chest, the officer continued to speak slowly. “That place you’re talking about…that’s Eden.”

  Jenny felt her face scrunch up. “Eden?”

  With a vigorous nod, he said, “Yes, ma’am. That’s the place where all them hippies committed suicide back in 1968.”

  Chapter 8

  “Suicide?” Jenny demanded. Anger tore through her body as she raised her finger to point at the officer’s face. Awareness soon came over her, however, and she lowered her hand, hoping she had done so before the policeman had a chance to notice.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he continued. “There was a good lot of them, too. They all took a bunch of sleeping pills. They were directed to by that crazy leader of theirs…” He snapped his fingers several times in an attempt to remember. “What was that asinine name he called himself?”

  Jove. Jenny knew the name, but she was not inclined to tell it to that asshole sitting in front of her. It took everything she had not to jump across the desk and punch him in his arrogant face.

  The officer gave up trying to recall the name, waving the notion away with his hand. “Makes no difference. Anyway, the whole town was glad to be rid of them, to tell you the truth. They were nothing but trouble. They stole stuff, ran around naked all the time…between you and me, it was a relief when they offed themselves.”

  Jenny felt her whole body shake with anger, although she maintained the ability to repress it.

  Zack remained unaffected. “So, you remember this?”

  “I was a kid back then,” the policeman explained, “but I do remember my father talking about what a nuisance them hippies were. He was as happy to see them go as anybody. He was the sheriff, and he knew he finally wouldn’t be getting any more calls about them. His job got made a million times easier when they all took those pills.”

  “There weren’t any pills,” Jenny spewed, her ability to keep quiet temporarily overshadowed by her anger. Resuming control, she closed her mouth, sealing her lips tightly, but hate shot out of her eyes like flames.

  Both Zack and the officer looked at her, awaiting an explanation.

  She offered none.

  Zack put his arm around Jenny’s shoulder and thanked the policeman for his time, leading his wife quickly out the door to the safety of the car. “What was that about?” he asked as soon as they crossed the parking lot.

  Feeling the fury leave her body, Jenny was finally able to calm down. “It wasn’t suicide,” she declared emphatically. “Jove did not have anybody take any pills.”

  “Jove?”

  Jenny climbed inside the car as Zack did the same. “Yes, Jove. That was the spiritual leader’s name.” She closed the door behind her. “And he never would have done such a thing.”

  Zack cocked his eyebrow and looked at Jenny. “Do you think it was murder, then?”

  “I absolutely do,” she declared, “and I’ll bet anything that guy’s pig of a father was behind it.”

  Zack looked at Jenny with wide eyes. “Did you just call him a pig?”

  She had. She knew she had. Although, she also knew that word would have never come out of her mouth if she had been in control of her actions. The notion of what may have just happened to her terrified her to the point where she said nothing in response to Zack’s comment.

  “Jenny, are you okay?”

  This time she nodded. “Yeah, I’m okay. I was just really, really angry for a moment there.” She swallowed before adding, “Frighteningly so.”

  “You know, that wasn’t smart of me at all,” he stated, shaking his head. “I shouldn’t have taken you to a
police station considering we’re dealing with a spirit who doesn’t do well around cops. That could have been a disaster.”

  “If I had done what I was inclined to do, it would have been,” Jenny declared. “I felt the urge to yell at him and slap him across the face. I think I was able to resist simply because I’m an adult and I know it’s wrong to do that to an officer. If I were a child, though, I may not have been able to stop myself.”

  “Which is probably what happened to Addy,” Zack declared.

  Jenny’s tone reduced to a whisper. “Which is probably what happened to Addy.”

  “What was it like for you, being in there?”

  She released a breath and shook her head as she pulled the car out of the parking lot. “Frustrating. And strange. Somehow, I just knew that the cop was lying about everything. I knew the spiritual leader’s name was Jove, first of all, which is something I shouldn’t have been aware of, and I was positive that he had never told us to take pills. We didn’t steal from the people around us, either, and we were not the nuisance he made us out to be. It was very hard to just stand there and listen to him talk about us so badly.”

  “You’re saying us,” Zack pointed out warily. “You are Jenny in there, right?”

  With a nod and a slight laugh, Jenny said, “Yeah, it’s me. But during the conversation with the officer, I felt like I had been a one of those people living at Eden—and he had been telling lies about me and the people I considered family.”

  “Well, it sounds like there are definitely two sides to this story,” Zack concluded, “and we need to figure out which one is correct.”

  “Probably the third one,” Jenny replied, glancing at Zack out of the corner of her eye. “Isn’t the truth usually somewhere in the middle?”

  He began to look at his phone again. “That it is.”

  As Jenny followed the directions from her GPS to get her back to the highway, Zack busied himself with the Internet. After a while, he announced, “Go figure. Once again, now that I know what I’m looking for, I am able to find a good deal of information about it.”

  “What does it say?”

  “This says…” He changed his tone to indicate he was reading directly from the article. “The Family at Eden took up residence near Bedford, Georgia in the early 1960s. With an emphasis on communal living and oneness with nature, the group of forty-five young adults lived largely off the land, foregoing many modern conveniences such as electricity and running water. They lived a vegetarian lifestyle, eating the food grown on the property and eggs laid by the chickens who freely roamed their land.

  “At times, members of The Family would venture into town, bartering or even selling their crops and firewood with members of the community. According to longtime residents of Bedford, however, the bartering was not always consensual. ‘Sometimes we would wake up to find our garden tools had been replaced with a dozen eggs, or our clothes had been taken off the line and a pile of firewood would be there instead,’ complains Sherman Abbot, who was in his thirties when the Family at Eden took up residence near Bedford. ‘We had always been able to leave our doors unlocked at night, but once those hippies came around, all of that changed.’

  “Most of Bedford’s residents shared in Abbot’s sentiments, although a select few sympathized with The Family’s plight. ‘They did need to stop taking things that didn’t belong to them,’ admits Thelma Morton, another longtime resident of Bedford , ‘but I never felt like we were in danger of meeting any harm because they lived close by. I even tried to help them out sometimes by buying some of their produce or hiring them for some household tasks. I realized they had very little means to make money, and they were just trying to get by. Unfortunately for them, it wasn’t possible to live solely off the land. They did need a little help once in a while.’

  “In addition to the complaints about theft, many of the town’s residents also took exception with the frequent drug use and flagrant nudity exhibited by members of The Family. ‘We certainly didn’t need our kids seeing them parading around with no clothes on,’ Abbot said with disgust, ‘and they did it all the time. It just wasn’t right.’

  “Although she represents the minority, Thelma Morton has a different take on the situation. ‘It wasn’t like they walked around town naked…they kept the nudity on their own property. It seemed to me that people would drive out there just to catch them with no clothes on, and then they would turn around and complain about it. Eden was in a very secluded spot…if the townspeople didn’t want to see them naked, they didn’t have to. I think people just looked for excuses to complain about them.’

  “On June 17, 1968, all forty-five members of The Family were found dead at Eden, the cause of death being an apparent mass suicide by overdose. For the members who had autopsies, toxicology screens revealed fatal levels of the barbiturate Nembutal in their systems, which was commonly prescribed as a sleeping pill and often abused in the 1960s.”

  Zack looked up from his phone. “Hey, it says here that Nembutal was one of the drugs in Marilyn Monroe’s system when she overdosed.”

  “I guess it’s potent,” Jenny replied.

  “Apparently.”

  “So, what do you make of this?” she asked. “It appears our little spirit friend believes this was a murder, but everyone else seems to think it was suicide...even the author of that article, who obviously went to great lengths to represent both sides of the story.”

  “I’m kind of leaning to the murder theory, myself,” Zack concluded. “I imagine the spirit would remember if he had taken pills. Besides, if he’s pissed off enough about his death to stick around for fifty years, I have to think that he didn’t do it on purpose.”

  Jenny silently digested the information. Zack’s point was valid; suicide didn’t appear to be likely. Perhaps the spirit’s version of events was correct. But had the sheriff really murdered everyone in The Family so he could be rid of them? This, too, seemed like implausible behavior from a man who had sworn to serve and protect. Although, Jenny had learned in previous cases that nobody can be above suspicion. Considering how strongly the spirit felt that the sheriff was guilty, she certainly couldn’t ignore the possibility that it was true.

  But how to find out?

  She let out a sigh as she posed, “What do you think the chances are that we will be able to find out exactly who this spirit is? I get that he—or she—was a member of The Family, but maybe if we can get a name we can find some people who may have known him.” Jenny scrunched her face. “Or her.”

  “You’re going to have to tell me that, chief,” Zack replied. “Do you think you can figure out who it is?”

  Jenny stayed quiet for a moment. “Maybe.” Although, she didn’t have any idea how.

  “You know what I think we should do?” Zack began. “I think we should contact your private investigator friend to see if he can track down the whereabouts of this…” He referred back to his screen. “…Thelma Morton. It seems she didn’t have a problem with the people at Eden, so she might be able to give us their side of the story or, at the very least, an account that isn’t heavily biased in the other direction. It seems like most people in the town would side with law enforcement on this one.”

  Jenny waved her finger at Zack. “You know, that’s not a bad idea. It said in the article that she had interactions with them, buying their stuff and hiring them. Maybe she knew some of them personally.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. The only problem is…what are the odds she’s still alive?”

  After some quick mental math, she said, “Well, it’s been fifty years, give or take. How old was she back then?”

  “The article doesn’t say,” Zack observed, “but her name is Thelma. That sounds to me like she’d be old.”

  With a laugh, Jenny noted, “You do realize that every old lady named Thelma was once a little girl named Thelma.”

  “Yes, but they were little girls named Thelma back when Thelma was a popular name, which was probably i
n the twenties or thirties.”

  “If she was born in 1920, she’d be…” Jenny stopped while she calculated the number.

  “Old.” Zack finished her sentence. “Probably too old to give us any helpful information.”

  She made a face to express her defeat, but she quickly regained her optimism. “Does that article say the names of anyone who died at Eden? Maybe we can contact a living relative of one of the victims themselves. They’d probably be able to give us The Family’s side of the story.”

  “This one doesn’t give names,” he clarified, “but that’s not to say another wouldn’t.”

  “Can you look up some other websites?”

  “One step ahead of you.” Zack’s finger was already busy pressing and swiping the screen.

  Jenny silently contemplated the obvious hole in the theory. If the spiritual leader had called himself Jove, the other members of The Family may have gone by assumed names as well. Even if they were able to find out that John Doe had died at Eden, that doesn’t mean Jenny would have been able to determine which member of The Family that had been. Perhaps this time the identity of her contact would always remain anonymous, and she’d just have to settle for seeking justice for the entire group as a whole.

  At that moment, a thought occurred to her. “Zack, do you remember what Dr. Wilson told us…that they were never able to get the name of the person who spoke through Addy? That she was always just vague when they asked what her name was?”

  His attention remained focused on his phone. “Yeah.”

  “You don’t suppose it’s possible that they actually did get the name but didn’t realize it?”