by Terri Grimes
Five
“Good morning, Miss Sugarbaker,” the perky brunette greeted me as I opened the front door two hours later.
“You must be Amanda. Thank you for rushing over so fast. It’s so nice to meet you,” I said, shaking her hand. “And please, call me Gertie.”
“It was no problem at all,” she assured me, the tone of her voice implying otherwise. “Gertie is short for Gertrude, I assume?”
I shook my head and smiled. “No, it’s just Gertie.”
At her raised eyebrow, I explained. “The story goes, when my mother was pregnant with me, she was taking a stroll in an old cemetery and saw a broken gravestone of a young girl named Gertie and fell in love with the name. What she didn’t realize was the rest of the name had crumbled off the old stone and originally read Gertrude. By then it was too late, I was a Gertie.”
“That’s an interesting story,” the young lady commented, her mind clearly elsewhere as she gazed around the front porch.
I shrugged in nonchalance. “Thanks,” I murmured.
As her gaze stopped darting and her vision fell on me it seemed for the first time since she arrived she finally saw me.
“You’re younger and prettier than I thought you would be,” she assessed, her fingers nervously touching the golden cross hanging from a delicate chain around her neck. “When you mentioned you lived in the Meridian-Kessler area I envisioned a much older woman.”
“I get that a lot.” And I did. It was unusual for a resident to be younger than sixty-five in this neighborhood. It was an area known for turn of the century homes and turn of the century residents that lived here since, well, since the turn of the century. Okay, perhaps some of my neighbors weren’t quite that old, but I was pretty sure that at least a couple of them had been around to vote Lincoln into office. Nonetheless, at thirty-one it was apparent I didn’t fit the Meridian-Kessler stereotype.
I got right down to business. “I know we talked on the phone about the problem when I called this morning, but perhaps a small tour of the house will help you get a better feel for the situation.”
The young woman visibly paled as she took a step backwards. “Uh no, um, that’s okay. It’s such a nice spring morning, why don’t we sit out here and chat?” She gestured towards the porch swing that swayed in the late April breeze.
“Sure. That would be fine.” Shutting the screen door I walked over to the ancient white-washed porch swing and sat down, the aged slats groaning as I motioned for Amanda to join me.
“You mentioned on the phone that you’ve lived here for about a year?” She rummaged through her oversized purse for several seconds before finding a pen. As I watched her movements, it wasn’t lost on me that she was sporting this season’s Coach bag. I could feel the green-eyed bug of jealousy nipping at me as I tried not to gawk at the colorful bag with its multihued C’s blazoned across the material.
“Yes, this house has been in the family since the forties, but I didn’t take up residence until a year ago.” My grandparents found the three-story Victorian when they drove past the grand dame while out for a ride in the country one day, soon after my grandfather returned from his stint in the Pacific during World War II. They fell in love with two things that day—the large white structure with intricate gingerbread trim and each other.
Although I moved into the house only a year ago, I had spent a number of happy childhood afternoons on this front porch. My grandmother and I had shared many special moments, swaying in the breeze on the porch swing. I remembered her teaching me to snap green beans, her worn, weathered hands covering my young inexperienced ones. I felt tears forming as images of her filled my consciousness. She had passed away a little more than a year ago, just ten months after my grandfather. I vowed to my grandmother that I would take care of her precious dream home and never sell it. It was a promise I recently regretted having made.
“Did the paranormal activity start as soon as you moved in?” Amanda asked, her pen poised to paper.
I snapped back to the present. “No, not at all. In fact, the old place has always seemed to have good energy.”
“And you said no one has ever died inside the house?”
“Nope, not that I know of.”
“What about your grandparents? On the phone, you mentioned they lived their entire married life here. Did either of them die in the house?”
“Hospital. Both of them,” I said. “My grandfather had a massive coronary at home but died on the operating room table while they were inserting a pacemaker. And Grandma, she suffered a stroke walking from the kitchen to the living room. She lingered on for a week in the hospital, never regaining consciousness.”
“Miss Sugarbaker?” The young woman’s voice interrupted my thoughts.
“I’m sorry, what were you saying again?”
She sighed, pausing to write something on her pad. “I was asking just how soon after you moved in did the activity begin?”
“Ah, the activity,” I said, shaking my head. “Well, you may remember the earthquake that hit us a couple of months ago?”
“Five point two on the Richter scale, wasn’t it?”
“Every bit of that. The first reports on the news service that morning were that it was five point six. Later they revised it and downgraded it to five point two.”
“Oh yes, I do remember a controversy about that.”
“Wouldn’t be the Midwest if we didn’t have a controversy over something,” I said.
“That’s true,” she agreed.
I swatted at a mosquito buzzing around my head. “A little early in the year for those monsters, wouldn’t you say? I’m afraid we are going be in for a deluge this summer with the mosquitoes, thanks to all the rains we had in March.”
Amanda looked up from her pad of paper, an impatient expression marring her otherwise attractive features. “That’s Indiana for you,” she said with a dismissive wave of the hand. “Now back to the earthquake.”
I was taken aback by her abrupt attitude, but decided to chalk it up to nervousness at being so close to a possible ghost. It was becoming more and more apparent that she was none too fond of the paranormal. I couldn’t help but wonder how she landed a job as a case manager at Urban Ghost Hunters, or as it was more often referred, UGH.
Originally known as The Outdoor Urban Ghost Hunters, aka TOUGH, their mission was to investigate graveyards, seeking evidence of the paranormal. According to their website, when they expanded their organization to investigate paranormal claims at residential and commercial properties, they dropped the TO and became UGH, or in other words, Urban Ghost Hunters. As the founder stated, it was just as well, because when they had the TO in their name, they discovered people were taking the initials literally and expecting them to open up a can of whoop-ass on the spirits. He said it wasn’t that they couldn’t, but they preferred to use a more gentle approach because after all, their mission statement was ‘ghosts were once people too.’
There was no way I’d believe Amanda would be caught dead going in a graveyard at night to investigate. No pun intended. I mean the girl wouldn’t even go in my house. There was only one answer that fit into this equation. Male. Yes, a man. I would bet donuts to dollars that the reason she worked for UGH was because she had her sights zeroed in on a man. There was no way that bimbo had even an iota of real interest in the paranormal. No, her interest was likely more of the human, three-legged variety.
At the sound of Amanda tapping her pen on her pad of paper, I forced myself to put all thoughts of her possible love life out of my head and continue on with my story.
“On the morning of the earthquake, I awoke at four thirty-five by the jolt of my bed shaking. At first I didn’t have a clue what could be causing it and I do admit, I was more than a little afraid.”
“That’s understandable,” Amanda agreed in a monotone voice.
She was tweaking me off with how quickly she turned that charm on and off. One second she was Ms. Perky and the next she acted like s
he could give a shit less. I wondered what her deal was and who’d pissed in her cornflakes that morning. There was a reason God made Prozac and maybe Amanda Winston was that reason.
Mentally shaking my head, I forced myself to focus on the matter at hand.
“I turned the light on and I could see the bedroom walls swaying. It was the damnedest thing.” As I paused to take a breath, I heard her pen scratching on the paper over the sound of my rapid heartbeat. “I had no idea what was going on at first. I called my best friend, Timmy and he is the one who told me it was an earthquake. I never experienced one before, but being from San Francisco originally, Timmy had seen more than his fair share of earthquakes. We both turned our bedroom television sets on and stayed on the phone with each other as we watched the news reports flood in.”
“Are you trying to say the earthquake caused your paranormal activity, Miss Sugarbaker?” Amanda asked, a sneer marring her otherwise perfect features.
Was that really what I was trying to say? It seemed too much of a stretch, even for me. I cleared my throat. “No, not at all. What I am saying, is I began to notice the paranormal activity around that time. That day in fact.”
Amanda’s gaze bored into mine. She regarded me as if she was trying to decide if I was genuine or some kind of a nut job. I must have passed the test, since she continued, “I may be stepping out on a ledge here. But, after the earthquake, did you notice anything odd?”
I shrugged. “Sure. There were the cracks around the doorframes. That was odd, or at least to me it was,” I said, not sure where she was going with this new line of questioning.
“No, something odder than that. Commonplace, yet strange in its commonness.”
“Well, there may have been something.”
Amanda leaned in closer to me. “Yes?” she said in her now familiar impatient tone.
“Just after the walls stopped swaying, I heard a funny clinking sound. Well, more like a tinkley clinking sound with a light thud thrown in for good measure, or maybe even a clunk.” I looked at Amanda to see how she was taking this.
Good, finally I had her full attention.
“And,” she prompted. “What was it?”
I hesitated. “No, you’ll think I’m crazy.”
“I’ve heard it all. Nothing surprises me anymore.”
“Okay. There, right on the floor of my bedroom was—” I hesitated again as I nibbled on my lower lip.
“Please, Miss Sugarbaker, focus. What was it?” she snapped.
Her rapid mood changes weren’t making this any easier on either of us.
“Lying on my bedroom floor, just as pretty as you please, was a medallion.”
“A medallion?”
“Yes, a medallion. It looked like a religious medallion, the kind that you’d wear around your neck on a chain. But what confused me was it seemed to be magnetic.”
I inwardly grinned as I noticed Amanda’s eyebrows rise almost all the way up to her forehead. So much for her having heard it all.
“You mean like a Saint Christopher medal?”
I nodded. “All I can figure is that perhaps when the house shook during the earthquake, it caused the medallion to pop out of the wall. How strange that I never noticed it before,” I said.
“Hmmm, strange indeed,” Amanda said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
It was apparent she didn’t believe a word I said. Nonetheless, I continued, “Then, just after the medallion dropped to the floor, I heard a hissing sound, similar to the noise of steam when it comes out of a teapot just before it starts to whistle. I looked at the hole in the wall where the medallion had just been and a faint wisp of fog hung in the air for just a split second and then with a popping sound, disappeared. And the room…” I giggled.
“Yes? What about the room?” Amanda’s voice was sharp.
I giggled again. “It wasn’t me, I swear. But the room smelled like…well, like a big raunchy fart. You know the kind your granddad would make after Thanksgiving dinner when he asked you to pull his finger.” Unable to contain myself any further, I laughed.
I don’t think Amanda shared in my amusement at my grandfather’s flatulence.
I would bet anything her grandfather never ripped a raunchy
one after a big holiday meal. Probably because they all had their asses corked with the same pole she had up her butt.
She tilted her body to face me as we sat in the swing and stared at me intently now, making no attempt to hide her suspicion of my facts.
“Pardon my ignorance, but how could you not notice a religious medallion sticking out of your wall, Miss Sugarbaker?”
“You forget, my grandparents lived here since the mid to late nineteen forties.”
I could see by the look in her eyes that a light bulb had gone off. “Wallpaper?”
My humor evaporated, and I nodded. “Exactly. And lots of it.”
She visibly shivered. “For your sake, I hope it wasn’t the huge pink cabbage roses many people had an affinity for in the forties and fifties.”
I snickered. “You just described it to a tee.”
“Oh, God,” she moaned.
Reaching into her Coach bag, Amanda drew out a business card. After scribbling something on the back, she handed it to me.
“What’s this?” I asked, looking at the richly embossed card as I turned it over in my hands.
“This,” she said with an air of disdain, “is a business card. You don’t seem to be unintelligent, Miss Sugarbaker. I would have thought you would have known a business card when you saw one.”
“I’m not blind, Miss Winston. I can see that it is a business card,” I returned with just as much attitude. “What I don’t see is what its purpose is.”
“That’s apparent,” she sniffed. “If you will take a closer look at the card, you will see I’ve penciled you in for tonight at seven o’clock. On the other side of the card is the contact information for UGH’s founder and lead investigator, Sam Valentine. He’ll be conducting your investigation.”
Okay, I would let her attitude go for now, but only because I was desperate. Even though Miss Amanda didn’t think I was smart, I was at least bright enough to know that she could erase my appointment just as easily as she had penciled it in.
“I would strongly recommend you don’t keep Sam waiting, Miss Sugarbaker.” Amanda’s sharp, pinched features took on a soft look as spoke his name. “Sam Valentine’s time is very valuable and you would do best to remember that. Do I make myself clear?” Her voice rose an octave. “You do understand, don’t you, Miss Sugarbaker?”
“Oh, I understand all right,” I said. And I did. I understood from the rapt expression on her face that he was the whole reason she was in this line of work in the first place. Yes, it would seem that Miss Amanda Winston had a major case of the hots for her boss.
Six
That night I was anxious as I awaited the arrival of Urban Ghost Hunters’ lead investigator, Sam Valentine. Although I had high hopes Mister Valentine would take care of my paranormal problem, I had no delusions it would be an easy task. I couldn’t help but wish that it were as easy as getting rid of ants. Maybe they could spray holy water around the baseboards and voila, all my ghostly problems would be gone.
“Dream on,” I told myself with a dry laugh. Yes, I knew better than to think or even hope that it would be as simple as that.
Hearing a car door slam, I rushed to the foyer before he even had a chance to knock. Throwing the front door wide open, I stopped dead in my tracks, the huge welcoming smile on my face dissolving into thin air.
“Oh. Shit.” The words unconsciously fell from my lips.
It was the stranger from the bar. How the bloody heck did he find out where I lived? Sure, I was drunk last night, but not so drunk that I would give a stranger my address. I think. Although I’d slept with the stranger so at that point what did a mere address matter? Before I could open my mouth, he extended his hand.
“Hello. We didn’t have a chance
to be formally introduced last night, but I’m Sam Valentine. It’s nice to officially meet you, Miss Sugarbaker.”
Ohmigod! This was Sam Valentine? I let my ghost hunter pick me up like a cheap tart in a bar last night and then I slept with him? Holy Christ on a cracker. And I thought the ghost was my only problem.
I looked at his hand, still extended towards me as he waited for me to recover from my shock. As I grasped his large, warm hand, an unwilling shiver of delight ran up my arm and down my spine, causing my nipples to pop to attention as if they had a mind of their own, which apparently they did.
Removing my hand from his firm grasp, I placed it on my hip and narrowed my eyes.
“I believe the gentlemanly thing to have done would have been to tell me who you were last night,” I said in the iciest tone I could muster.
He flashed a 14-carat smile. “Would it have mattered, Miss Sugarbaker? I don’t think you would have remembered my name in the state you were in.” He raised an eyebrow and tilted his head. “In fact, I’m surprised you can even remember you were in that bar last night.”
The cad.
I gasped and snapped, “That’s not a very nice thing to say.”
“I didn’t say it with the intent of hurting your feelings, Miss Sugarbaker. I was merely stating a fact.” With that said, he flashed a saucy wink and walked around me into the living room where he proceeded to make himself at home.
I watched as he sat on my pastel green and pink paisley sofa and spread his briefcase open on my grandmother’s antique oak coffee table. I shouldn’t have been surprised that he made himself at home without being invited. It was apparent that Mister Valentine was used to taking what he wanted, when he wanted.
Not that I could remember.
“Perhaps we can focus on the real reason I’m here?” he said in an honest, even tone.
Presumptuous, that’s what he was. And hot. One hundred percent hot.
I sank into the pale green wing chair opposite him, tucking my legs beneath me and glared at him. “You don’t have to be rude about it, Mister Valentine.”
