The Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum (A Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum Mystery)

by Kirsten Weiss

  “He pretty much goes where he wants,” I said.

  “Excellent. He usually joins us for the hunts. Of course, we have the latest in ghost hunting equipment, but the only thing that beats GD is our medium, and she won’t be able to make it tonight.”

  The cat found a patch of sunlight and stretched, yawning.

  “Such a character!” With a wave, Grace bustled out the door.

  I locked it behind her and leaned against it.

  Amusement lit Mason’s blue eyes. He sipped his coffee. “Having fun yet?”

  “Not really.”

  His chuckle was deep, rich. “You look like a kid who just heard someone canceled summer vacation. It’s not so bad.”

  “You won’t be huddling over a space heater in a concrete shell for four hours.”

  “You can always come up to my place. That’s what Chuck used to do. We’d have some beers, then I’d go to bed and he’d watch TV on the couch until it was time to shut down the ghost busters.”

  I weighed the options. TV and a soft couch with a Viking who probably ran in a motorcycle gang, or three hours with the space heater. It was no contest.

  “I’ll bring the pizza,” I said.

  “I like pepperoni.” Mason raised his coffee in farewell and ghosted through the plastic curtains into the tea shop.

  I held my breath, half-expecting another explosion between Dieter and my neighbor, but heard nothing. I minced through the denuded tea room and followed a coil of orange extension cord out the back door.

  Dieter plugged in his circular saw. “What happened?”

  “We need to shift the dumpster as far onto Adele’s property as we can.” And by “we,” I meant “he.”

  “There’s no way I can move it fully onto Adele’s property and still have room for my truck and space to work.”

  “I know. I told Mason he could use the dumpster in exchange for encroaching on some of his space. And could you limit the circular saw to before noon?”

  Dieter blew out his breath. “Fine.”

  “And there’s one more thing,” I said. “You’ve been getting a lot of visitors.”

  “Sorry about that,” Dieter said, not sounding at all sorry. “I’ve told them to come through the alley rather than bug you in the museum.”

  “If you get caught running an illegal bookmaking business on the property—and that part of the alley is Adele’s property—she could be liable. You’re going to have to tell your clients to make their bets after work hours.”

  “What?” he sputtered. “That’s not always practical.”

  “Sorry, Dieter. You don’t really want to risk getting Adele in more trouble?”

  He flushed. “Fine. But just so you know, I do this for fun. It’s not like I’m a professional.”

  I wondered if Christy had known what Dieter was doing. He had a key to the building. Had she threatened to expose him? And how big an operation did he really have going?

  “Have you got odds on the Superbowl?” I asked. It was coming up in a week.

  “The Superbowl?” Dieter sneered. “I only facilitate bets on out-of-the-ordinary events like the Fresno crab eating contest or the Christmas Cow.”

  “Or Adele’s conviction?”

  Dieter’s hands clenched, his lips drawing into a white slash. “I said I did it for fun. Adele’s arrest is no joke.” He turned on the circular saw, killing further conversation.

  I retreated into the building, stumbling to a halt as I neared the plastic barrier to the museum. Wailing echoed from the museum, an eerie accompaniment to the circular saw. The hair lifted on my scalp. No such thing as ghosts. There was definitely no such thing as ghosts.

  Heart pounding, I sidled inside. The sound seemed to come from the Fortune Telling Room.

  “Dieter?” I called, hoping for backup. But my voice was lost in the scream of the saw.

  Movements stiff, I tiptoed across the checkerboard floor. The wailing grew louder. I pressed my elbows to my sides and slunk into the Fortune Telling Room.

  The cat sat on the round table beside a crystal ball, his head arched back, an unearthly howl emanating from his throat.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  GD paused to look at me, threw back his head again, and wailed.

  “All right, I’ll feed you already!” I hurried to my counter and poured kibble into his bowl. The rattle of the dry food silenced the cat. He stalked into the room, tail quivering.

  I set the bowl on the floor with a clatter. “All you had to do was ask.” Which I guess he had.

  I opened my inventory book and found where I’d left off. The spirit cabinet in the Fortune Telling Room. Even though the cat had been responsible for that unholy noise, I had to force myself back inside.

  The spirit cabinet stood against one wall. It was about six feet high by six feet wide, and a little over two feet deep. Its three doors could be bolted from the inside. The center door had a diamond-shaped hole cut into it. And a bench with holes for ropes had been set into a side wall. What was this thing? I vowed to ask Herb. Right after I forced him to tell the police what he’d witnessed the night of Christy’s murder.

  But since Herb wasn’t to be found, I returned to my computer to research spirit cabinets. Fortunately, P.T. Barnum had written a book debunking them. Spirit cabinets were used by mediums in séances to “prove” their powers were real. An assistant would tie up the medium inside the cabinet, and once he closed the doors, the spirits would go to work. Seemingly on their own, they’d rattle tambourines and wave ghostly hands through the diamond-shaped hole cut in the cabinet. But a good medium could untie herself before the doors finished closing.

  I shook my head. In the 1850s, the general public hadn’t been as exposed to stage magicians as we were today. But it was hard to imagine mediums getting away with it.

  I checked my watch, hoping it was lunchtime. It wasn’t. If I was going to have to spend the night at the museum, I had no intention of spending the rest of my day here. I could go home and clean my closets. Or job hunt.

  An email from the Historical Association pinged into my inbox. I seized on it like a bridesmaid lunging for the bouquet. The nice lady at the Historical Association had sent newspaper articles: three on Cora’s crime and an obituary on Martin. The print was old-fashioned, the pages stained by age. I had to enlarge the scanned articles to read them.

  The first article reported the suicide of Martin McBride, who’d hanged himself from the second floor banister. His wife, Cora, discovered the body when she came down for breakfast in the morning.

  Odd. I think I’d notice sooner if my husband hadn’t come to bed. The sheriff must have thought it odd too, because the next article’s headline was, MURDER OR SUICIDE? LOCAL WOMAN TRIED FOR MURDER. A neighbor testified he’d heard Cora and Martin arguing the night of Martin’s death, and to Martin’s violent temper. The sheriff testified that he’d found abrasions on Cora’s hands when he was called to the site of the apparent suicide the next day. She claimed they were due to her attempts to get her husband’s body down. The prosecutor argued murder.

  I fished out the photo of the two. Cora was a slight woman, a good foot shorter than her bulky husband. How had she managed it?

  The third article was short. The courtroom had been packed when the jury announced the guilty verdict. Cora proclaimed her innocence, and the judge sentenced her to life. I re-read the articles. There must have been evidence admitted that hadn’t made it into the newspapers, because the case against Cora looked thin. Or there’d been other stories that the Historical Association hadn’t managed to find.

  “Cora, what did you do?”

  GD Cat hopped onto the counter. Absently, I ruffled his fur.

  He bit my hand.

  “Ow!”

  The cat leapt from the counter and bounded into the tea shop, setting the plas
tic fluttering in his wake.

  twelve

  Taking the cat’s assault as a sign to leave, I shut down the computer and turned off the lights. I reached the sidewalk and was locking the door to the museum when a woman cleared her throat behind me.

  Startled, I turned.

  She dressed like my mother—expensively—in a cabernet-colored suit, pearls, and two-inch heels. Maybe that was why I felt a ping of familiarity. Graying hair mounted her head in marcelled waves. Her lips pinched. She stared at me like a hawk considering a slow-footed rabbit.

  “Hello.” I gripped my canvas messenger bag to my chest.

  “Are you in charge of the museum?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry, but we’re closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.”

  “I am aware.” She unsnapped the hook on her purse and handed me an envelope.

  Automatically, I took it. “What’s this?”

  “A petition for the closure of the Paranormal Museum.”

  “Closure? Why?”

  “It’s in the petition.” She turned on her heels and click-clacked down the sidewalk.

  I tore open the envelope. It could have been worse. She could have been a process server.

  Inside were two sheets of paper with columns of loopy, feminine signatures. At the top, it read: We the undersigned do not want the Paranormal Museum within the city limits of San Benedetto. We stand with concerned citizens in opposition to an occult attraction that threatens the image of San Benedetto as a producer of world-class wines.

  “What?”

  A woman pushing a stroller gave me a startled look and hurried past.

  Muttering, I walked down the street to my truck and got inside. Cracking a window, I skimmed the list of names, sucking in my breath at the sight of a familiar signature.

  I rummaged in my purse for my phone and called my mother.

  “Madeline! We’re still on for dinner next week, aren’t we?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Funny thing. Someone just handed me a petition to close the museum, and your name was on it.”

  There was a long moment. Then, “Oh, dear. I was afraid something like that would happen.”

  “What did you expect to happen when you signed a petition to shut down the museum?”

  “I signed it weeks ago, before I knew you were going to take it over. And I told Mabel to take my name off. I will have words with the committee.”

  “The committee?” I slumped. There was a committee? Of women like my mother? I would have preferred a process server.

  “It’s part of the San Benedetto Ladies Aid Society.”

  “But … why? What do they have against the museum?”

  “Some people think it’s not the image we want to promote. Of course, now that I know you’re in charge, I’m sure you’ll take it in a new and more sophisticated direction.”

  My grip tightened on the phone. “I will do no such thing. And what’s wrong with the image? The mayor’s behind it. Mr. Nakamoto even changed the name of his wine label to fit the haunted theme.”

  My mother sighed. “And therein lies the problem. Not everyone approves of the mayor’s ideas for economic development. And now that his best friend’s daughter has been arrested, it’s leverage against his development program.”

  A motorcycle rumbled past.

  “This is a town of twenty thousand people,” I said. “You’re talking like this is a high-stakes political game.”

  “Don’t you know that the smaller the stakes, the more vicious the infighting? Size is no guarantee against political shenanigans.”

  “For Pete’s sake!” My gaze flicked upward to my pickup’s fading red roof. “The dairy farmers build a stupid giant straw cow every Christmas.”

  “And we’ve been talking to the farmers about stopping. The larceny is becoming more of a draw than the cow. Do you know they put up live webcams in December? They said it was to prevent another incident, but the online video of the conflagration got over seventy thousand hits.”

  “If the dairy farmers can burn a giant cow,” I said hotly, “I can have a paranormal museum.” If I wasn’t inside my truck, I’d have stomped my foot on the ground in a fit of petulance. Maybe it was a good thing I was in the pickup.

  “I knew this would make you more stubborn.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that museum.”

  “Stick to your guns, darling, and don’t worry about the petition. I know you’ll be a huge occult … er, success, if that’s what you want. I just don’t want you to settle for something because it’s there. Are you sure it’s what you want to do?”

  I thought I’d known what I wanted, but now I wasn’t so sure. Why did I care so much about the museum? Was it simply because of Adele?

  As if she’d read my mind, my mother asked, “How is Adele?”

  “I don’t know. She sent me a to-do list from jail.”

  “She’s still in jail? I’d have thought she’d have made bail by now.”

  “So would I, but one of her lawyers told me they couldn’t have the bail hearing until the weekday.” It wasn’t lunchtime yet. Maybe they’d had the bail hearing by now?

  “Well, it wouldn’t surprise me if she ended up running the place.”

  “She hates orange.”

  “Sensible of her. Now be nice to your brother.” My mother hung up.

  Baffled, I stared at the phone. When wasn’t I nice to Shane? Even if I wasn’t nice, it wasn’t as if his ginormous ego would notice.

  Shaking my head, I reapplied myself to the problem at hand. It was just a petition. It wasn’t as if they could revoke my liquor license, since the museum didn’t have one (if only). What could they do? Picket the museum? I tugged my jacket more firmly into place.

  Starting my pickup, I aimed for home, determined not to think about Adele, or the petition, or the museum’s finances. Instead I focused on the land. Even beneath iron-gray skies, and even denuded of leaves, the vineyards were magic, gnarled and dark. I felt the knots in my shoulders loosen.

  At home, I made lunch, swallowed an aspirin, read a book. Monday was my day off, so I was going to enjoy it. But my mind kept wandering back to the murder and Adele.

  The lighting dimmed, and I checked my watch. It was eight o’clock, and velvety blackness hung outside my windows. Had Adele made bail? I didn’t want to call her family—if Adele hadn’t gotten in touch with me, she probably wanted some alone time, assuming she was home. And if she wasn’t home … that meant she hadn’t made bail. How could I find out?

  I checked the local newspaper on the Internet, but there was nothing new about Adele. My stomach rumbled. I called in an order for a large pepperoni pizza and drove through streets sunk in fog. The streetlights cut disembodied, glowing orbs in the swirling mist.

  A man darted in front of my pickup. Heart in my throat, I slammed on the brakes, half-standing. Shoulders hunched and face obscured, he looked a bit like Herb. But by the time my heart returned to normal operations, the man had vanished, a phantom in the fog.

  I picked up a couple of beers with the pizza and drove to the museum, parking in front. The lights were on inside the motorcycle shop, the chrome in its windows gleaming. I walked past, looking for a staircase that would lead me to Mason’s upstairs apartment. Finding none, I balanced the pizza and beer on one hip and unlocked the museum.

  “GD?”

  The cat didn’t respond.

  I flipped on the lights. The plastic curtains billowed. I froze, rooted to the spot, then shook myself. It was the breeze from the front door closing, not a killer or a ghost. Suppressing a shiver, I hurried through the tea room to the back alley exit.

  A narrow concrete staircase led me up to a studded metal security door, built to repel marauders. I rapped with my knuckles, the beer bottles balanced atop the pizza box. My knock echoed, clanging ho
llowly.

  Sounds of bolts drawing back, chains rattling. My heart squeezed. Had this been the best idea? I barely knew Mason, and the fact that he looked like a tattooed Nordic god was no reason to split a pizza with him.

  The door creaked open, and Mason’s shaggy blond head emerged. “Hey. Come on in.” He drew the door wide.

  I skittered past, stumbling to a halt. A massive skylight soared above the studio’s industrial-chic living area. A half moon glowed yellow through the fog above. The furniture was white, black, and modern, the walls bare brick, the floors distressed. Glass bricks divided a bedroom from the living area. The kitchen was open, stainless steel, and gleaming.

  “Wow,” I said.

  He came to stand beside me, and I thought I could feel hot energy coiling from his body.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Nice night.”

  He took the pizza and beer from my hands and placed them on a glass coffee table. I gaped at the expensive-looking oriental rug, the big screen TV, the stone Buddha cross-legged in an alcove.

  “Were you expecting a half-built motorcycle in my living room?” he asked.

  “I didn’t know what to expect. You’re a mystery wrapped in an enigma. The loft is amazing. Did you build this?”

  “Why pay someone else when you can do it yourself?” Mason grinned. “And avoid getting permits.”

  “Are you sure you want to reveal your criminal past?”

  “Why? You’re not going to narc on me, are you?”

  “I’ll leave you in suspense.” I checked my watch and cleared my throat. “Speaking of which, the ghost hunters will be here any minute. You can start on the pizza. I’ve got to get down there.”

  “Hold on.” He took the pizza to the kitchen and slid it onto a pizza stone, and then into the oven. “To keep it warm. I’ll walk you down.”

  I thought of Christy and those billowing curtains. My inner feminista fled, cowering behind the black leather cushions on Mason’s couch. “Thanks.”

  He followed me downstairs and through the darkened tea room. Its concrete floors and bare walls seemed to glow, chalky in the light streaming through the plastic drapes. I brushed through them into the Paranormal Museum. A woman’s figure shifted behind the window, and I opened the door.