by Alexie Aaron
“I need to go to the office. I have his contact digits in a folder in my desk.”
“Ted!” Mia called.
“Yes?” he asked, walking into the back.
“Ask Mike to drive Bernard and Ralph to the museum please?”
“On it,” he said, walking away.
“How are you feeling?” Ralph asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. Pregnant, determined, shocked, sad but hopeful. You?”
“Amazed and proud of you and your friends,” Ralph said. He reached forward and took her hands in his. “We’ll get through this. Mia, this is more than an investigation for you, isn’t it? You seem to be taking this as a personal assault.”
“Damn right, if those ghosts didn’t spill a little vodka, I would have lost the two most important men in my life, and hundreds would have been killed. No one hurts my family, no one!”
Chapter Thirty-one
Jake presented a hundred suspects in the area that fit the physical attributes given to them from brief glimpses on the security cameras, and as Mason and Cid added in Mia’s information, the list narrowed down to three. All three had used a credit card in The Eighty-eight. All three lived locally.
Burt, who was presented with the information, asked to see Murphy.
Mia walked outside the command post and called for him.
He appeared with Kevin at his side. “Stephen, Burt would like to see you in the construction trailer. I’ll be there to talk with Tony after I change clothes.”
“Why change clothes, you look most comely,” Murphy said before disappearing.
The compliment was unexpected. Mia dropped the papers she was holding and knelt down to retrieve them. Mia accepted Kevin’s try at helping her up. His hands went through her.
“Mary, Margret! How am I to exist if I can’t touch anything or…”
“Or anyone,” Mia comforted. “Your son can help you. Don’t be afraid to ask.”
“Your face softens when you’re talking about me lad,” Kevin observed.
“He saved my life a few times, and we’re great friends.”
Kevin’s eyes sparkled. “It must be the Murphy in ‘im. His ma was a cold-hearted bitch.”
“Honestly,” Mia scolded.
Kevin smiled wickedly and disappeared.
Murphy moved through the wall of the trailer and looked around before manifesting. Dash was pacing the floor, and Tony was fidgeting as Sabine, Patrick and Ira calmly waited.
In order to not scare anyone, he tapped his axe on the door before he revealed himself.
“Thanks for coming so quickly,” Burt said. “Murphy is our head of security. His attention to detail, and other abilities, have made him an excellent addition to PEEPs,” he explained for Tony’s benefit.
“How can I help you?” Murphy asked.
“We’re working on getting a team of professionals to open up the floor of the restaurant safely,” Burt began. “Until then, we have three local suspects that we need to keep a watch on. One of the suspects may have be aware that Mia is on to him or could know about the evacuation of the restaurant. I can’t ask the police to watch the three of them without cause. So I’m asking you, Murphy, to watch them in the meanwhile. I know that you can’t be everywhere. Sabine and Ira have offered to alternately bilocate to watch one of them.”
“I can take another, and Kevin and Fergus the last suspect,” Murphy offered.
“You need to be very careful. As much as you may want to, you can’t go into the suspects’ homes. You all are energy based. If there is bomb-making equipment there, you may accidently set something off. Your job will be to watch and report. Cid will handle the bilocaters. Murphy, we can’t let any of these men know what is going on, so make sure your team doesn’t - excuse the term- spook them. Jake is working on breaking into their computers to gather intel. We need to build a case to bring to the authorities.”
Murphy nodded in understanding. Burt turned and addressed Dash, “Have you heard from the detective who was on your earlier case?”
“I put in a call but, as of yet, have not heard back. I’ll try again in the morning. I can be a squeaky wheel when necessary. I’ll threaten to work my way up the chain of command. That should get him to stop by.”
“Hopefully, we’ll have more to show him by then,” Burt said.
There was a light tap on the door which preceded Mia walking in. She looked pale but rested. Ted walked in behind her. She had changed her clothes. She wore what PEEPs was used to seeing as her battle armor. To Dash and Tony, she may have looked more like a cosplayer than a paranormal investigator.
Mia sat down and was quiet until Burt finished with Murphy, Sabine and Ira. After they left, Mia got up and walked over to the bouncer who was leaning against the wall trying to put his world in order after seeing Murphy manifest.
“Tony, I’m sorry to have kept you. I have a strange request.”
“Go ahead, doll.”
“Would you allow me to read your memory?”
“Will it hurt?”
“Not unless I squeeze your hands too hard,” she said.
Ted pulled out two chairs and arranged them facing the other. Mia sat down in one.
“Can I ask you one thing first?” Tony said, sitting down in front of Mia.
“Please ask away.”
“I misplaced my car keys, and I can’t seem to remember where I left them.”
Mia smiled. “I’ll do my best. How long ago did you lose your keys?”
“I haven’t had them for a week.”
“When did you use them last?” Mia asked.
“I remember using them here to open up the door. I must have had them after because… No wait, I didn’t drive. I took a cab. Damn.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll see what I can do. Hey, there may be a new career in store for me. Finding lost car keys.”
“And I was worried about our retirement,” Ted teased. He put a soft hand on Mia’s back.
Tony noticed the loving gesture and approved. “What do I do, doll?”
Mia took his hands in hers. “I want you to think of the day you lost your keys. I have a feeling we need to start here.”
“Gotcha.”
Tony closed his eyes, and after a few seconds, Mia was with him experiencing his day. He opened up the bar and began setting up his velvet rope line. He adjusted his suitcoat. Tony always wore a suit to work. He wore a tie with piano keys on it that Dash had given him, along with an array of vibrantly colored shirts. Today he was a bit distracted. He dropped his keys into his suitcoat pocket instead of putting it in his pants pocket as was his custom. Mia made note of this. It was hot out. He took off his suit coat and hung it up on the coatrack until the sun when down.
Mia paid close attention to the arrival of customers. She smiled when she saw a few spectral beings from what appeared to be the 1960’s enter the restaurant. She watched as they walked over and hung out beside the piano player. As she was turning back, she noticed someone at the coatrack. It was unusual since the night was warm. He had his back to Mia. She waited until he turned around and was rewarded with the dead eyes of the man who had stomped on her fingers. He slid Tony’s keys into his pocket and proceeded into the bar. Tony eventually put his jacket on and didn’t check for his keys, as he assumed they were in his pants pocket. Mia moved out of Tony’s head.
“The eight thirty-three man took your keys. This is how he got into the restaurant after hours. I noticed you don’t have an alarm,” Mia addressed Dash.
“Couldn’t afford one yet. Also, the vibrations of the machines, preparing the lot for the expansion, most likely would just set it off, so my security guy said to wait,” Dash told her. “I’ll have the locks changed right away,” he promised.
Mia turned back to Tony. “Take me to when you first noticed the eight thirty-three man.”
Mia resumed her place in the bouncer’s mind. Tony was working the line, asking for IDs, which flattered the older gentlemen. He came across the lone wo
lves. “Hey, you guys are in the wrong place tonight. Not a fair maiden in the house.”
“We’re here for the music,” the mouthiest of the group lied.
“Yeah, well you better like show tunes,” Tony commented. He looked at each man and figured they were going to wait it out, looking for drunk women to prey upon, possibly from one of the many girls’ night out groups. Tony made a note to stop and question each lady before allowing her to leave with one of the men. Tony opened the rope and let in the guys. A straggler ran to catch up to the wolves. Tony thought he was with the group. He looked at his watch. It was eight thirty-three. Mia watched the man enter the restaurant and hang on the outskirts of the group. She also noticed he never spoke to any of them. He just looked around.
Mia followed Tony’s memories to eight thirty-three every night, ending with this last night. She pulled away. “I can identify him now,” she said.
Ted handed her the pictures Jake had pulled.
“This is the eight thirty-three man. These two men were in the bar a few times. Both of them are gay, and one is in a relationship,” she said.
Ted read the name off of the ID. “Hamel Brentwood.”
Cid moved quickly to catch Ira before he OOBed.
Ira had just laid down when Cid came in. “Ira, tell Murphy it’s Hamel Brentwood we need to watch. He lives at 188G. It’s a garden-level condo.”
Ira nodded. He closed his eyes and moved out of his body. Ira walked to the street and passed quickly by Kevin and Fergus. Murphy was positioning himself between the last two subjects until Ira joined him. “Murphy, it’s the man at 188G we need to watch. His name is Hamel Brentwood.”
Murphy dropped his axe once. Kevin and Fergus moved quickly to him. Murphy explained to his father and Fergus that they should watch Hamel, keep tabs on any visitors he may have, and follow him if he leaves. If he was heading towards the bar, Murphy would drop his axe twice. Ira understood and returned to his body.
After reporting to Cid, he left the command post to help Burt work on assembling the data Jake was collecting on Hamel Brentwood.
Mia and Ted walked into the bar. Ted drew the blinds down on the windows at the front of the restaurant. Mia proceeded to where she spotted the odd grouting. She started to gently move one of the bar stools. Ted lightly slapped her hand, reminding her that she was pregnant and there would be no moving the heavy bar stools for her.
Ted took out a few super light discs and directed their strong light at the tile floor. “I can see it. It’s a square of four of these twelve inch tiles. They abut the bar. Let me look on the other side of it. You stand over there in the kitchen behind the wall,” he ordered.
Mia moved quickly to the spot. From her vantage point, she could see Ted behind the bar. He was gently pulling things out and stopped. “Damn.” He backed away and motioned for Mia to leave with him. “We need Bernard’s contact now. Or I’m calling the bomb squad.”
“Tell me,” Mia said as they locked the door behind them.
“There is some kind of device that was placed behind one of the wine refrigerators. It has wires that lead into the floor.”
“Oh my god,” Mia said.
“The good thing, if there is a good thing, is the receiver seems to have a limited range.”
“That’s why Hamel runs into the restaurant and uses himself as the detonator. He wants to be part of the explosion.” Mia didn’t need to remind Ted that in the Dark Watcher’s vision, she was to be the first victim of the blast.
“Mia, tell me again how big the destruction was,” Ted asked.
She stopped and turned. “A city block.”
“What I saw, even if he planted TNT under that tile, it wouldn’t take out a block. The building sure. I can see it destroying half the house behind and to the side of the bar. This empty lot would protect the buildings east of here. The street would act as some kind of buffer. Debris would fly into those homes, but it wouldn’t obliterate them.”
“I’m telling you that there wasn’t anything here.”
Ted gazed down into the pit. “What if…” he stopped and ran some calculations in his head, pulled out his cell and typed into the search engine, and then paled.
“What is it?”
“One thing that has been bothering me since we first interviewed the ghosts from McNally’s was that the bar falling into the limestone cave would not have been enough to quietly kill the inhabitants. But natural gas could. Mia, McNally’s is acting as a plug for a very large pocket of natural gas. Tony saw the first and the secondary blast. It’s a third one that takes out the block.
Hamel paced the floor. He was shaken by the pursuit of the small fat blonde. Who was she? Was she security or just a nosy customer? She did drop some coins. Was he just being paranoid? He wasn’t ready yet. He would have to seek her out and kill her before she gave everything away. The drunken trash at the hen party had called her the Ice Queen.
Hamel sat down at his computer and typed Ice Queen in the search engine. He sorted through the fairytales and children’s cartoons. Frustrated, he hit images and there she was. Her face and body were leaner, but there was no mistaking those moss green eyes. He clicked on the image, and it sent him to Ebay where they were selling the poster for ten times the original price. He clicked out of there and went back to his research. He found a video clip from some contest run by the Illinois Institute of Technology. He listened to the interview of the contestants. He turned up the volume when it was the Ice Queen’s turn.
“Miss, can I asked your name?”
“It’s Ms. Ms. Mia Martin.”
“So you’re an MMM,” the geek said. “But to us you’re a BBB.”
“What’s a BBB?” she asked.
“Bodacious Beach Bod.”
Mia laughed. “Me?”
The emcees turned, and one of them looked into the drone camera and said, “And this ends our interview process. As soon as we get the go ahead from the Rosemont, we will ask you to vote by cheering and clapping for the BBB of your dreams.”
He watched further to see if there was more information and was rewarded.
“Nerds! This just in. We have more info on our BBBs,” the local announcer said. He read off the data collected on each of the three contestants while they showed an edited tighter film of each woman. Mia’s turn came up. “Mia Martin is one of the lead investigators for the Paranormal Entity Exposure Partners. That’s right, nerds, she’s one of us. How would you like having this nerd investigate your home?”
Hamel typed Paranormal Entity Exposure Partners into the search engine and clicked on the PEEPs webpage. The upper left corner held their logo, a ghost being chased by three marshmallow peeps. Where had he seen that before? The realization hit him. It was painted on the side of one of the trucks in the lot adjacent to the restaurant. What were these ghost hunters doing in that lot, and why was one of them inside the restaurant?
Was the place haunted? Hamel thought back to the long sigh he heard after he had conked that man on the head. He scrolled through the pictures and biographies of the members of PEEPs and realized that he had attacked one of the founding members of the group. He felt a wave of relief wash over him. Hamel thought that it was a health department or gas company investigator, but all along, it was just a ghost hunter. Still, one of them had gotten a good look at him. He needed to silence her and do it soon.
Chapter Thirty-two
“What do you mean I have to stop digging?” Barb asked.
“We think there is a pocket of natural gas under that building. I’ve got an inspector coming out to test for it,” Burt told her.
Barb’s face went from furious to reasonable. “You look like you’ve been up all night, Hicks.”
“Two nights,” Burt corrected. “We have a situation here. Right now, we’re waiting on a bomb disposal specialist to take care of a problem in the restaurant.”
“Heaven sakes, it doesn’t just rain around you PEEPs, it monsoons.”
Cid, who was sit
ting near Burt, itched to correct Barb’s grammar, but he held his tongue. Everyone was tired and Barb was disappointed; he didn’t want to cause any problems.
Everyone was in a sleep deficit situation. Mia had insisted that Patrick take Ira and Mason to Mia’s parents’ house after dropping Sabine off last night. Burt agreed that they needed their team alert and fresh. Mia wanted them out of harm’s way. The most experienced PEEPs stayed on duty. Dash and Tony went down to the local precinct to rustle up Detective Hardy or his boss. Tony was ready to identify Hamel Brentwood as a suspicious character who twice ran out on a bar tab and, possibly, the man who stole his keys.
Ted and Mia waited for Bernard’s contact in the restaurant. Mike had called instructing them not to open the door to anyone but Sergeant Craig West from the Illinois National Guard. Mia had fallen asleep curled up in the big corner booth. Ted had brewed up a lethal mixture of caffeine in Dash’s kitchen and was enjoying his second cup.
The tap on the door woke Mia. Ted waited until the Sergeant showed his ID before Ted unlocked the door.
“Thank you for coming, Sergeant,” Ted said.
“Dr. Wesley said you had a suspicious package?”
“It’s more than a package. My wife noticed this area of the floor had been changed, and I went to see if the odd grouting had extended under the bar. That’s when I found this.”
Sergeant West looked at the set up behind the refrigerator and nodded. He motioned for Ted to follow him. “It looks like a detonator to me. I’m going to call in my team and report this to the police. Be prepared to make some statements. Are you the owner?”
“No, the owner is presently at the police station trying to get someone to come out and look at the situation here. There have been threats to this business before.”
“And who is the contact on the force that I need to speak to?”
