A Case of Imagination

by Jane Tesh

  But the oddest thing in the house is the huge portrait of the Fairweather children that hangs over the mantel in the living room. Des, age eight, stands behind Jerry, age six, who is seated with two-year-old Tucker in his lap. The boys are smiling. Des has a protective hand on Jerry’s shoulder. Jerry has his arms around Tucker.

  Harriet’s not in the picture.

  “Now what?” Jerry asked.

  “Maybe Benjy Goins will be more forthcoming. Ride with me?”

  “I think I’ll stay here and see what other secret porn studios I can find.”

  ***

  Goins didn’t seem surprised by my questions. He checked to make sure he had the right tape running and then turned his attention to me. “Yeah, Val bought some used machines, editing equipment, a couple of used cameras.”

  “Did he tell you what he wanted all that for?”

  “I didn’t pay that much attention. He was an odd duck. He had all kinds of plans and schemes, and none of them ever worked out. He said something about filming Chiroptera. Now you tell me what that means.”

  “Chiroptera? Sounds like some kind of animal.”

  “What else would he film? Probably means mice or spiders.”

  Spiders would not need a heart-shaped bed.

  “Benjy, how long was Eberlin dead before he was found?”

  “I don’t know. You’d have to ask the police.”

  Chief Brenner would not appreciate my questions. “Do you know the name of the mailman who found the body?”

  “I think it was Dennis Padgett. He carries mail out to the farms.”

  Before checking with the post office, I stopped in Georgia’s Books and looked up “Chiroptera” in one of the dictionaries. Chiroptera was the scientific name for the order of bats in the class Mammalia, phylum Chordata.

  Bats in the attic. Perfect.

  As I put the dictionary back in its place, Hayden called, “Madeline, could I ask you something?”

  “Yes, of course.” I came to the counter. “What’s up?”

  “Do you suppose Jerry would be willing to come check my house for evil spirits?”

  He looked so serious and so worried I hated to disillusion him. “Hayden, most of what Jerry does is just for show.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it’s more than that. Mrs. Mosley was in here earlier today, and she told me about the remarkable results he had with their séance. She said she’d never seen anything like it.”

  What could I say? “Well, that really wasn’t a typical séance.”

  “She said he crossed over.”

  “That’s probably what it looked like. Jerry’s a very good actor.”

  Hayden didn’t appear to hear me. “And now with this horrible thing that’s happened to Juliet—I’m afraid the spiritual energy around town is getting worse. If it’s centered anywhere near my house, I need to know. Please. If Jerry can do anything to help, I’d appreciate it.”

  The entreaty in his blue-green eyes was impossible to resist. “I’ll ask him.”

  Hayden relaxed. “Thanks.”

  “I guess anyone’s better than Cynthia Riley.”

  “As much as I’d like to hire Cynthia, I don’t think my marriage would stand the strain—which reminds me. How much does Jerry charge for a session?”

  “I’ll let you two figure that out,” I said.

  “Madeline, do you have any idea who killed Juliet? I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  “Did you know her?”

  “Not really. The only time I ever spoke to her was when I gave a talk to her English class about poetry.”

  “I don’t know who did it,” I said, “but I’m going to do my best to find out.” You don’t deserve to worry like this, I thought. If Jerry’s little act can give you some peace of mind, then I say let him do it. “As soon as I get home, I’ll have Jerry call you.”

  He thanked me again, and I set out for the post office.

  ***

  The woman at the post office said I could find Dennis Padgett on Oak Street off of Main.

  “He should be near Newsome Cleaners right now.”

  Dennis Padgett was a thin man with a few pale hairs waving above his head like the tendrils of a sea anemone. He was willing to talk to me if I was willing to trail him as he filled mailboxes along Oak Street.

  “Can’t slow down the delivery of the mail, miss.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. “I don’t want to keep you from your duty. I just have a few questions.”

  “Fire away.”

  “I’d like to ask you about the day you found Val Eberlin.”

  Padgett rolled up a magazine and tucked it into the mailbox of a shoe store. “Sure sorry to find him like that. He was a right spry old bird.”

  “Where did you find him?”

  “I wouldn’t have even come up to the house that day except I had a package for him. Now, sometimes when he was in town, he’d pick up his mail, but I hadn’t seen him for a while, and I didn’t like to leave packages in that old bent mailbox of his. So I went up on the porch, figuring I’d just knock and leave the box if he was busy, but the front door was wide open, and he was lying there. Saw his feet first. Gave me a start.”

  “Just inside the front door?”

  “Yes, ma’am, like he’d opened the door to go out and couldn’t get no further.”

  “Do you have any idea how long Mr. Eberlin had been dead?”

  “Could’ve been a couple of days. Could’ve been late as a week. That’s something the police would know.”

  Padgett took a key from the ring at his belt to open the back of a metal mailbox. I was going to press for more details when something occurred to me. “What happened to the package?”

  “I don’t know, miss. Left it there.”

  “In the house?”

  “I guess so. I set everything down right inside the door and run inside to call the ambulance.”

  “Could this package have been a videotape?”

  “Might have been. It was the right size, as I recall.”

  Padgett finished filling the slots in the metal mailbox. We walked to the next house. “Would someone else have stopped by to check on him?”

  Padgett took a packet of letters from his bag. He slid them through the mail slot. “That’s doubtful, miss. Everybody knew he liked to be left alone.”

  “Did he have anyone in town who was a best friend?”

  “Everybody knows everybody here, but I can’t say as he had any particular friends.”

  “Any visitors? Relatives stopping by?”

  “Nope. The Fairweather boy’s the first I ever seen.”

  I thanked him for his help. “If you happen to think of anything else, Mr. Padgett, I’d appreciate you calling me.”

  “Yes, ma’am. You’ll be staying at the Eberlin house, then?”

  “For a while.”

  He squinted at me with his pale eyes. “Thinking of moving to Celosia?”

  “Probably not.”

  “But the Fairweather boy’s here to stay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Like his uncle? Kind of a loner?”

  “No, quite the opposite. Jerry likes having people around.”

  ***

  It’s a good thing Jerry likes having people around because that’s how I found him when I returned to the house.

  He was sitting at the kitchen table, holding his arm as if it hurt. Attending him were a boy and a girl, both about ten years old. The boy had on an over-large tee shirt and baggy shorts. Blond streaks striped his brown hair. The girl was a beautiful black girl the color of caramel with neat cornrows and gold earrings. Her shorts and tee shirt were pink. Both glanced up, eyes wide.

  “We didn’t do it!” the boy said.

  “We thought you were gone,” the girl said.

  The boy immediately forgot me and rounded on his companion. “No, Denisha, you thought they were gone. You wanted to come in.”

  The girl put her hands on her hips. “Aust
in Terrell, you are the biggest liar.”

  “I told you to hold the cover.”

  “And I told you it was your turn to hold the cover.”

  “Guys,” Jerry said. “It’s okay.”

  I checked Jerry’s arm. “What happened? Is it broken?”

  “Ow! It is now.”

  “The cover fell on it,” Austin said.

  What were they talking about? “What cover?”

  Austin exchanged a glance with Denisha, who said, “You might as well show her. It’s all spoiled now.”

  Austin sighed. “I’ll show you.” He went into the pantry. “Come on.”

  In the very back of the pantry, he lifted a section of the floor and showed me a neat set of steps leading down into a passageway. A cool breeze from below brought the scent of stone and earth. “It’s a secret way in.”

  Good grief, I thought. What else are we going to find in this house?

  Austin was watching me carefully, as if trying to judge my reaction. “Val used to let us use it. Miz Brenner drove off and we thought you were gone, but then we saw Jerry and got scared, and then the cover fell on his arm.”

  “I see.”

  “It’s not broken, is it?”

  “No, he just likes to make a fuss.”

  “I heard that,” Jerry said.

  We came back and sat down at the table. “Our breakfast ghosts,” I said. “If you guys wanted some snacks, all you had to do was ask.”

  Denisha looked down. “We weren’t sure how things would be now that Val’s dead.”

  Austin said, “You aren’t going to call the police, are you?”

  I thought about it. “Well, you were already in the passageway. You could’ve run off, but you stayed to help. The next time you want to visit, come to the door.” They nodded. “Your name is Austin Terrell?”

  “Yes, and this is Denisha Simpson. She lives with her Aunt Averall Mercer.”

  “Is your mother Samantha Terrell?”

  He nodded.

  “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Madeline Maclin, and you’ve already met Jerry Fairweather.”

  “That’s a neat name, Fairweather,” Denisha said. “Was you born when it was nice outside?”

  “My birthday’s in May, so it probably was,” he said.

  “My birthday’s in May, too. May twenty-sixth. I was ten. Austin won’t be ten till the end of July.”

  Austin immediately fired up. “Oh, like he cares, Denisha.”

  “You do, ’cause I’m older than you.”

  “By two months. That hardly counts.”

  “Does so.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “How did you two get here? Did you walk all the way from town?”

  “We know lots of shortcuts,” Austin said. “It’s not that far if you cut through the woods.”

  “And Val let you sneak in whenever you wanted to?”

  Denisha shook her head. “We didn’t come every day. We have lots of other places we—” She stopped and clapped her hands over her mouth.

  “Denisha!” Austin said.

  I finished her sentence. “You have lots of other places you sneak into.”

  Austin came to the defense. “We don’t ever take anything.”

  “Except cornflakes.”

  “Val said we could have those.”

  “All right,” I said, “let me get this straight. You spend your summers hiding in other people’s houses.”

  Denisha sighed heavily as if she couldn’t believe how thick I was. “Noooo. We just go in for fun. It’s a game, like ‘Super Spy.’”

  I glanced at Jerry. “I guess there’s not a lot to do in Celosia.”

  “‘Super Spy’ is a great show,” he said.

  Austin and Denisha sat up. “You watch ‘Super Spy’?”

  “‘No secret is safe, no code unbreakable.’”

  They began to rattle off their favorite episodes.

  “Did you see the one where he had to get out of that castle and all he had was ten seconds before the bomb went off?”

  “Or the one where the code was all in music notes but you had to play it on this certain organ in that spooky old church?”

  “Or the one where he used this real live electric eel and smacked the bad guy right in the face? Pow! ‘Lights out!’ I love that one.”

  “It might be on now,” Jerry said. “It’s almost five.”

  This announcement made Austin and Denisha leap up.

  “Five! We gotta go. My mom’ll be home in about twenty minutes. Come on, Denisha.”

  We followed them as they hurried to the front door.

  “I really like what you’ve done with the place,” Denisha said as she hopped down the porch steps.

  “Thanks,” Jerry said.

  “Are you going to fix up the rest of the house, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “But not the attic, right?”

  Jerry glanced at me. “Why not?”

  “That’s the one place Val wouldn’t let us go. He said it was super private business.”

  “It still is,” I said. “Did any of Val’s visitors go up there?”

  They shook their heads. “What’s up there?” Austin asked.

  “Just a lot of very expensive stuff.”

  This explanation was enough. “Okay, well, see you later.”

  They waved good-bye and ran across the meadow to the dark edge of forest.

  “Cute kids,” Jerry said.

  I couldn’t help thinking what a great father he’d make. Lord, where did that idea come from?

  “They’re a whole lot more adventurous than I was at that age,” I said.

  “Let’s see, at age ten, you were walking the runway, and I was playing with little cars, I guess. I wasn’t much for exploring.” He rubbed his arm.

  “Are you going to live?”

  “It’s okay. I was a lot more surprised to see two little faces looking up at me from underground. Let’s check out the passageway.”

  “First, you need to call Hayden. He wants you to exorcise his house.”

  “Be glad to.”

  Jerry called Hayden and set up a time to come sweep the Amry house for unwelcome ghosts. Then we went into the pantry. I lifted the trap door. There was a rush of cool air.

  “Kind of dark down there. Do you have a flashlight?”

  Jerry didn’t have one, but I kept one in the car. I retrieved it, and we went down the steps and into a tunnel. I had to stoop a little bit. The walls were smooth and smelled of wet cement.

  “This is great,” Jerry said. “No wonder the kids like sneaking in.”

  The tunnel led to another set of steps. We climbed up and found ourselves next to the garage. A large bush covered this end of the passageway.

  “Wow,” Jerry said. “I wonder why he needed a secret entrance like this. Did you find out anything from Goins?”

  “He says Val bought a lot of used equipment from the station. Here’s the good news: Your uncle was filming bats.”

  “Bats? That’s all?”

  “I didn’t think it wise to mention the Valentine bed to Benjy Goins. I also spoke to the mailman who found Val. He came up to the house to deliver a package. He’s pretty sure it was a videotape, and he left it here when he went for help.”

  Jerry frowned. “But we didn’t find a tape. Could someone else have taken it?”

  “And why would someone want it?”

  A voice called. “Jerry!”

  He brightened at the sound of Olivia’s voice. “We’re back here!”

  She came around the corner of the house. “What are you doing?”

  “There’s a secret way into the house. Come on. I’ll show you. It’s really neat.”

  “Jerry, I’m not going to go down into a dirty hole. Come inside. We have a lot to discuss.”

  In the kitchen, Olivia put her briefcase on the table, opened it and pulled out a large stack of folders. She opened the first folder. “Okay, there’s quite a lot involved. Let’s start with
the basics. I’ll check with the local zoning laws and make sure we’re not breaking any. As to insurance—do you even have insurance on this house?”

  “I don’t know,” Jerry said.

  “I’ll check on that, too.” She set that folder aside and opened another one. “Here’s a list of all the health and safety regulations you have to meet before we can open for business. Is there another way of accessing the upstairs bedrooms? Do we have smoke detectors? Things like that.” She passed that folder to Jerry and opened folder number three. “It’s absolutely vital that you keep good records for tax purposes. You’ll need a cash receipts journal, and a cash disbursements journal, plus you might do well to join the SBA and BBB.”

  “SBA?”

  “Small Business Association and Better Business Bureau.” She handed him a piece of paper. “Here’s a sample income projection sheet. If you have four rooms and charge sixty dollars per night and you’re open one hundred days a year, that’s a possible twenty four thousand a year. Of course, you could always charge more or less than sixty dollars, depending on how many people you think will want to sleep here.”

  Jerry glanced at the paper and put it on top of the folders. He made a face at me as if to say, this is more than I bargained for.

  Olivia moved on to the next item on her checklist. “Okay, here are some other things to consider. You’re going to have to keep this place spotless. Have you thought about laundry service? What about your guests who smoke or drink? Will you let guests use the telephone? What if they want to bring their children or pets? And what will you do in case of a medical emergency? This house is pretty far from a hospital. Have you thought about any of these things, Jerry?”

  “Well, no.”

  “We just need to sit down and hash out all the details.”

  He looked even more uncomfortable with this suggestion. Olivia, however, looked very self-satisfied. She gave me a little smile. She knew as well as I that Jerry resisted being pushed into situations that required too much work.

  “All right, now, let’s see. What’s next? All the books say the main thing you need for a successful B&B is a good location. You have that, but what would your guests do?”

  “Well, I was going to show them how to cleanse their auras and the best way to feel walls, but—wait a second.”

  As he paused, I saw Olivia’s face tighten. Jerry, I thought, now’s the time to be creative.