by Kylie Logan
Hanging on to the wooden shelves I’d seen when I arrived at the storage room, I managed to get to my feet, and I kicked through the water, hoping to make contact with my flashlight or my lantern.
No luck, and no way I was going to search with my hands. I wasn’t so out of it that I’d forgotten the lews.
My hands slick and unsteady, I got my phone out of my pocket and turned on the flashlight app.
When I confirmed that I was alone in the storeroom, I let go a shaky breath.
No headless ghost.
I shined the light in the direction of the watery hole I’d discovered earlier and saw that now, it looked more like a pond than simply a puddle. Water slapped my shins.
I needed to find a way out of the old storeroom.
And fast.
I’d already started to feel my way along the wall, the wooden shelves as my guide, when I remembered the box I’d been looking through when I was bushwhacked. Step by careful step, I made my way back to the other side of the room, aiming my light at the shelves and grumbling a curse when I saw that the box was gone.
“You fell, it fell.” I wasn’t sure how good the theory was, but at least it gave me hope. If nothing else, there in that lightless room with the cold water inching higher every moment, hope was what I needed.
I shined my light under the shelves, and the first thing I saw was a fat lews, looking decidedly unhappy at being disturbed.
“Not going to panic,” I told myself, backing away. “Not going to panic.”
I knew the mantra would calm me only so long.
My heart in my throat, my stomach tied in painful knots that tightened by the second, I ignored the reptile and kept on looking.
When the light landed on the wooden box, I admit it, I hummed a bit of the “Hallelujah Chorus.”
Water had already starting licking at the stack of letters inside the box, and I couldn’t take the chance that they’d get even wetter. I closed my eyes (yeah, like that was going to help if there was a snake hiding under the fabric that lined the box), grabbed the letters, and felt around for the shiny object I’d seen in the instant before I got conked. My fingers closed over something cold and metallic, and I stuffed that in the inside pocket of my jacket along with the letters, made sure there was nothing else in the box, and knew it was time to get out of Dodge.
There was less chance that the headless ghost went toward the winery than there was that he was hiding out in the caverns through which I’d already come, so I focused on finding the door that would lead me to the next old storeroom. Thank goodness, it wasn’t far away.
The moment I stepped into it, drippy, smelly, and grateful, I knew where I was.
It was the storeroom where I’d found Noreen’s body.
* * *
One shower didn’t seem like enough, so when I got home, I took two: one to get rid of the stench of mold, and the other to soothe my aching muscles and calm my still-shattered nerves.
The way I figured it, a glass of really good Chilean Carménère wouldn’t hurt, either.
With EGG gone for the evening, I had the house to myself, and I put on my favorite jammies (the ones with the pink flamingoes on them), built a fire in the parlor, and poked and prodded it until the blaze was bright and the heat of the flames seeped through me and warmed me inside and out.
It was only then and with half the glass of wine gone that I allowed myself to think about what had happened earlier that day.
Of course I knew that headless assailant who conked me in the cavern wasn’t really Sleepy Harlow. I mean, not the real Sleepy Harlow, the dead Sleepy Harlow. It was someone who was playing our local ghost; maybe the same someone Noreen had arranged to take Chandra’s place. Someone who didn’t want me poking around in his business.
A shiver skittered over my shoulders, and I grabbed for the knitted afghan I kept on the back of the couch and tugged it over my shoulders.
Between headless mobsters, dark caverns, and snakes—I couldn’t help it, I shivered again—I was pretty sure I’d never calm my jumpy stomach.
I needed a distraction, and I found it in the form of the letters I’d brought out of the cavern with me. With the flames cracking and throwing a soft orange glow, I untied the ribbon bound around the letters and started looking them over.
Two hours later, I was no closer to discovering who killed Noreen.
But I had learned some pretty amazing things.
It was almost enough to make me forget my headache.
* * *
The ghost getters got in very late, and by then, I was totally wiped. From the place where I’d fallen asleep on the parlor couch, I listened to them spill into the house and climb up the stairs, promising myself I’d waylay them one by one in the morning.
I was as good as my word, and when breakfast was done, I made my move.
“Hey, Liam.” He was about to disappear back upstairs to listen for recorded EVPs, or look for spooky evidence on video, or take a nap—whatever it was ghost getters did when they weren’t getting ghosts. Lucky for me, Liam was too polite to plow right through me. And I was too smart to move away from the bottom of the stairway so he could get around me.
I glanced toward the parlor. “I was wondering if you could help me.”
Liam was a muscular guy with short arms, thick hands, and cheeks like a bulldog’s. He yelled up the stairs to tell Dimitri he’d be up in a couple of minutes, and when I waved my hand, Vanna-like, toward the parlor, he stepped inside.
He breathed in deep. “You made a fire last night.”
“It was chilly.”
He shifted from foot to foot. “So . . . you saw another entity?”
I couldn’t stand the thought of stringing him along. “Nothing like that. It’s just that . . . I heard you and Dimitri talking the other day and you said you could really use your plasmometer. I thought—”
“You’re going to talk to the cops for us?” A smile washed over his doughy face. “That’s great!”
I didn’t make any promises. That much is to my credit. I also didn’t tell him he was dead wrong. I guess that pretty much canceled out the credit.
“I thought you could tell me more about it,” I said.
“The plasmometer? Oh yeah, sure. So you can explain it to the cops, make them realize that we really need it. I figured they didn’t have the slightest idea what the thing is or why it’s such an important piece of equipment.”
Not exactly the way I’d heard it from Noreen’s lips on that video she made right before she died. For now, I was keeping that bit of info under wraps.
“Noreen designed the plasmometer, right? And you built it according to her specifications.”
“That’s right. I can’t take credit for anything other than following the plans. Noreen, she was the genius. She was the one who was brilliant.”
There was that word again. Just like last time I’d spoken to Liam.
“So how does something like the plasmometer happen?” I asked, and I didn’t have to pretend to be interested. I was as curious about the machine as I was about the death of the “genius” who’d invented it. “I mean, you don’t just wake up one day and say you’re going to invent a device that will make it possible for ghosts to manifest, do you?”
“If you’re dedicated to your profession, you do,” Liam told me.
Call me crazy, but I thought a woman who staged a ghostly apparition just so she could film it was anything but dedicated.
“I get that,” I said, even though I really didn’t. “I mean, when you’re really into something like paranormal investigations, it’s all you think about. You want to spend every day improving your craft.”
“Exactly.” Liam perched himself on the arm of the couch, then thought better of it. I was grateful. He was a beefy guy, and it was an expensive couch. “We tried some other things back in the day. You know, some other equipment that we bought. Then we built a few pieces of our own. But none of it worked. I mean, not like the Turner Plas
mometer. Genius. That thing is nothing but pure genius.”
“And you’re going to build another one.”
“If we can’t get ours back. Or if we can’t repair ours.” Liam darted toward the doorway. “You want to see the plans?”
He didn’t have to ask me twice.
Within five minutes we were in the kitchen, where Liam unrolled the plans for the plasmometer on the counter. With a dramatic gesture, he stepped back so I could get a better look.
I forgave him the drama. After all, he was on television, or he would be soon. And apparently, an invention of this magnitude deserved something of a drumroll.
The plans were on sixteen by twenty paper, and they reminded me of a blueprint.
Well, a blueprint drawn by a Jack Russell. On a caffeine high. And taking steroids.
There at the center of the paper was a rough sketch of the plasmometer, and around it lines and zigzags and arrows pointed to various parts of the machine and labeled what each was. That made sense to me.
What didn’t was the rest of the mess.
Coffee stains.
Words crossed out.
Erasures.
Some parts of the plan were drawn with even, careful lines and inked in to be easily readable. Other parts of it were filled in with orange crayon.
Some portions of the drawing were so detailed and meticulous, I could see how Liam would have had an easy time following them. Others were smudged and caked with something brown.
I bent closer and sniffed.
Peanut butter.
“Didn’t any of this make you suspicious?” I asked Liam.
“Any of . . .” He glanced down at the plans. “Oh, you mean the smudges and stuff? Why would it? Hey, I might not have a great scientific mind. I mean, not like Noreen. But that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate brilliance. You know, creative energy and all that.”
“But Noreen was . . .” I didn’t think I needed to soften my words. Not for Liam. After all, he’d worked with Noreen.
“She stacked the equipment alphabetically,” I reminded him, even though I shouldn’t have had to. “She arranged and rearranged and cataloged and made lists. Do you really think—”
“That doesn’t mean she wasn’t a great inventor.”
“No, it doesn’t, but—”
“And it doesn’t mean the plasmometer is any less valuable to us in our work.”
“Of course not, but—”
“Hey, who cares how the chick did it!” Liam grabbed the plans, rolled them up, and tucked them back in the heavy cardboard tube they’d come out of. “All that matters is that the thing works. And that you’re going to talk to the cops for us about getting it back.” Grinning, he walked out of the kitchen. “Wait until I tell the rest of ’em. They’re going to be freakin’ stoked!”
I left him to his return-of-the-plasmometer fantasies. I had my own work to take care of, so I shut myself in my private suite and got to work on the Internet.
“Turner Plasmometer,” I said to myself as I keyed in the words.
Up popped a few dozen sites.
One was EGG’s own website, and just as I expected, they spent an entire page singing the praises of the piece of equipment Noreen had so clearly thought was junk. Other sites I visited belonged to other paranormal investigation groups. A few congratulated EGG on the plasmometer and the advances they’d made in the field of searching for spooks because of it. A few others were decidedly jealous. If only they’d thought of it first! If only they’d put two and two together and made the connections the wonderful and fabulous and genius Noreen Turner did. They, too, could have had their own reality TV shows.
I guess there’s a purpose for everything, even carping. By the time I found my way to the blog of someone named Ted Fywell, I was so used to hearing “if only” that I didn’t pay much attention.
Until I read further.
I sat up, propped my elbows on my desk and stared at the computer screen. This Fywell guy lived in New Mexico, and according to a website filled with misspelled words and questionable grammar, he said that he was an engineer who specialized in making equipment for paranormal investigators.
He had the testimonials to prove it.
“Awesome dude,” one investigator was quoted as saying.
“Far-out spectacular!” another commented.
But what really caught my eye was a long, ranting post where Fywell claimed he, not Noreen Turner, was the one who’d actually invented the plasmometer.
I checked the clock, did some quick calculations to figure out the time in New Mexico, did some more research on the Internet, and made a few calls.
“Fywell? Ted Fywell?” Turns out Ted’s day job was as a professor of Engineering Design and Technology at Eastern New Mexico University in Roswell. Didn’t it figure. The man on the other end of the phone sounded confused when I asked for Ted.
“You can’t exactly talk to him,” he said.
“I could leave a message. Or if he’s not there, you could give me his home number. It’s important.”
“Not to Ted. Ted Fywell, he’s been dead for going on a year now.”
20
After a few more phone calls and a couple more hours of Internet research, I had pieced together the story of Ted Fywell’s untimely demise.
Suicide.
His coworkers said they weren’t surprised. Ted had always been something of an odd duck, they told me. A genius of the old-school, crazy-in-the-head, eccentric variety who was focused to the point of obsession with paranormal research. Once he heard about the Turner Plasmometer, his always-erratic mind latched on to the story of its unqualified success and Ted claimed the plasmometer as his own.
From then on, there was no going back. Ted’s behavior became more erratic. He missed classes. He grew more isolated. He had paranoid delusions about a break-in at his home and the resulting fire that, the fire chief out in Roswell told me, looked plenty suspicious. The chief had been circumspect, and though I was disappointed by his lack of candor, I couldn’t blame him for not coming right out and saying Fywell had started the fire himself.
How did all this tie into Noreen Turner’s murder?
As far as I could see, it didn’t.
At least, not until I dug a little further.
Halloween morning dawned clear and chilly, and by ten o’clock, I had a theory. And a plan.
As long as I was paying expenses for Aaron and his team of technical wonder workers who’d created the ghost in my parlor, I figured I might as well get my money’s worth.
Fortunately, Aaron agreed. To him, each new special effects challenge was an opportunity to hone his skills. And besides, he confessed, it sounded like a heck of a lot of fun, even if this time, the challenge wasn’t so much spooky ghosts and eerie voices as it was just plain, old-fashioned theatrical illusion.
By noon, I’d talked to Chandra and Luella and, yes, even to Levi, and they agreed to help in any way they could.
At one, I met the ferry so I could personally welcome Marianne and Alvin home, and while I was at it, I threw myself at Marianne’s mercy. And after all that time of worrying and wondering what Marianne would think when I told her the story of Jerry the Destroyer? Well, maybe having a scary medical problem and serious surgery changes your outlook on life and your appreciation of even the small things. Marianne listened—and burst into laughter. That is, right before she apologized left and right for causing me so much trouble and so much work.
She couldn’t wait to read my version of Charlie Harlow’s story, she told me, even after I warned her that after what I had planned for that night, she might have a little extra work to do on the book. Though I remained mysterious about the details, she and Alvin played along. They said they’d be at the Halloween party I was planning, even though their costumes—Lucy and Charlie Brown—didn’t quite fit in with my theme.
I convinced Kate to join us, too, though I have to say, that was the most difficult part of my day. She was sure that she wa
sn’t long for the non-prison world and, because of that, more depressed than ever. It is a tribute to her faith in me and her friendship that she agreed at all.
By six, with the sun hanging over Lake Erie like one of the dozens of pumpkins lit in the park for the huge costume party going on over there, everything was ready. Even I—who had, after all, given Aaron instructions as well as carte blanche when it came to expenses—was impressed when I walked to what used to be the Orient Express restaurant.
“So? Huh? What do you think?” Aaron was dressed as a bartender with a white apron looped around his neck, and he was justly proud of what he’d accomplished. He held out his arms and spun around. “Some transformation, huh?”
That was putting it mildly.
When last I’d been there, the Orient Express was a typical walk-in Chinese restaurant with a counter against the wall opposite the door and a few tables out front where folks could wait for their to-go meals or eat in if they wanted.
Now . . .
I looked around in openmouthed wonder.
Now, I swear, I was standing in a Prohibition-era speakeasy.
The front counter had been turned into a bar, where Aaron had been drying beer mugs when I walked in. The few white café tables Peter Chan, the Orient Express’s murdered proprietor, had had out front had been replaced by a dozen wooden tables. Each one had a flickering candle on it that added to the ambiance of the ceiling fans that swirled overhead and the spotlights that shone on potted palms in the corners. There wasn’t room for a live band (thank goodness—I wouldn’t have wanted to pay for one!), but Aaron had music piped in: Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith and Al Jolson. Two women stood ready to serve drinks and there was a guy in a pin-striped suit stationed at the front door whose job it was to demand that each person he let in knew the password I’d included in the email invitations I’d sent out that morning: “Bea sent me.”
“Bea sent me.”
Three cheers for Levi for following my instructions. When he walked in, he looked as amazed as I felt.
“Incredible.” It took me a moment to realize he wasn’t looking around at the speakeasy, but checking out the gold-colored flapper dress I wore. “How’d you ever come up with a costume like that at such short notice?”
