Madness in Brewster Square
by
Narielle Living
Mainly Murder Press, LLC
PO Box 290586
Wethersfield, CT 06129-0586
www.mainlymurderpress.com
Mainly Murder Press
Copy Editor: Paula Knudson
Executive Editor: Judith K. Ivie
Cover Designer: Karen A. Phillips
All rights reserved
Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Copyright © 2014 by Narielle Living
Paperback ISBN 978-0-9905103-8-3
Ebook ISBN 978-0-9905103-9-0
Published in the United States of America by
Mainly Murder Press, LLC
PO Box 290586
Wethersfield, CT 06129-0586
www.MainlyMurderPress.com
Dedication
To all of my aunts: Violet Marino, Rose Lagasse,
Terri Nigro, Nancy Slavin, and to Linda Bunker and
Nancy Ciaramella—the real Claudia and Estelle.
You helped me become the person I am today because
of your love.
Chapter One
I counted three hundred and thirty-seven steps from the bakery where I got my breakfast to my job at my brother’s store. I count things when I’m restless, upset or trying not to think about something, and I was trying not to think about the current direction of my life. I was bored, but I didn’t know what to do about it. I had obligations, family obligations, and I couldn’t just dump them and follow my dream. Besides, I didn’t even have a dream.
A nameless dread filled me, and I was practically breathless with anxiety as I trudged forward. Burnout. I’ve read about this.
I didn’t want to be late for work. Maybe Scentsations will go out of business. I was the assistant manager for my brother’s store, so I knew that wasn’t possible. Business had been good in the little aromatherapy store. My good luck would be my brother’s bad luck. I can’t think things like that.
Juggling a muffin, cup of coffee, oversize purse and book, I reached for the door handle. One quick glimpse inside stopped me in my tracks. I took a step backward, hoping to get away before either of them saw me. Two heads inside the store swiveled, looking out the window. Crap-a-roni, I was too late. They saw me. Now I had to go in.
The gentle tinkling of the wind chimes attached to the door was a direct contrast to the fight brewing inside the store. Taking a breath, I forced myself to step over the threshold.
“Ava Maria Sophia Cecilia, how are you?” The voice that greeted me was trying for maximum warmth, drawing my name out like butter on a hot pan, but I knew better. Plus, he used my full name, a sure sign he wanted something. He winked at me before turning away, a gesture I found repulsive. Ex-boyfriends should not wink at ex-girlfriends. Ever.
Turning back to my brother, the sleazy ex moved a step to the right. Doing this positioned him in front of the mirror better, a habit formed in high school that allowed him to make sure his slicked back hair was still slicked back and his gold medallion still sparkled from the confines of his hairy chest. For the millionth time I wondered what the hell I’d been thinking when I dated him.
“Joey, you gotta listen to me.” His words were sharp, a contrast to his attitude toward me. I stood in front of the door and closed my eyes, wishing that for once I’d been late.
My brother stood on the other side of the counter with his arms crossed over his chest and spoke through clenched teeth. “My. Name. Is. Giuseppe.”
My creepy ex, Kenny, smiled. I’d known Kenny for most of my life, and I knew what a rat he could be, but whenever he smiled he had this ability to appear warm and sincere. Even though I should have known better, I relaxed for a moment, thinking that maybe everything would be all right. Until Kenny opened his mouth again. “You’ll always be Joey to me. I can still remember little Joey O’Dell, cryin’ for his momma the day he lost his lunch box.”
Ouch. It looked like this fight was shaping up to include past insults all the way back to elementary school. Clearly I needed to step in and defend my brother. “Kenny, I don’t think …”
Giuseppe cut me off. “First of all, that was a long time ago. Second of all, you’re the one who stole the lunch box. Now what was it you wanted?”
My head swiveled back to Kenny. Giuseppe had a legitimate question, especially since he wasn’t on the best of terms with Kenny. What did he want?
“And wasn’t it just last week I saw you cryin’ again, down at the beach? What was it about that time? Maybe something to do with that sweet little wife of yours.”
“You’re an idiot, Kenny, a big, stupid, idiot. And you can shut up about my wife. I don’t even want you thinking about her, you hear me?”
Crossing between them, I set my coffee and muffin on the counter. “Kenny, what brings you here?” I asked, hoping he’d leave soon. My coffee was going to get cold, and I really wanted to eat my carrot muffin. With my Italian heritage reflected in my shapely figure, I probably should have just had carrots without the muffin, but I liked to eat when it was cold outside.
“Yeah, don’t you have work to do?” My brother was not helping the situation. As usual.
Kenny strode over to the counter, trying to act casual. Pretending to examine the array of organic lotions and soaps, he put his arms behind his back.
“I came to make you an offer.”
Did he really say that? Because I always had this idea that if you wanted to do business with people you made an effort to be nice to them. Silly me. But that’s always been how Kenny talked to others, as if he were a very important person.
My brother didn’t stop to think about it. “No.”
“Hear me out, and then you can say no.” Kenny’s voice continued to ooze charm, but it was wasted on us. “I would like to offer my services to you.” He raised a hand in protest before Giuseppe could say anything. “I think it would be mutually beneficial to present a united front to the community tonight.”
“What’s tonight?” I asked.
“We’ll talk about it later,” Giuseppe answered me before turning to Kenny. “No.”
“Talk about what later?” I asked. My voice was low, but not because I didn’t want Kenny to hear me. With him standing right there, I knew he could hear every word. My voice was low because when I get mad or upset that’s what happens. I don’t scream, I whisper.
Plus, I had a bad feeling about whatever my brother had planned, not because I was worried about the actual event. Along with the fact that he hadn’t clued me in on whatever was going on, something felt wrong. Maybe the tingling anxiety thing I’d had before walking in here was about tonight. What was my brother doing, and why would Kenny want to tag along?
Chapter Two
“Ava, we’ll talk about this later,” Giuseppe whispered back.
“You guys are doing a ghost hunt tonight,” Kenny told me.
“No,” I said.
I tried not to give much thought to whether or not ghosts really existed, believing there wouldn’t be a test. I should have known better, at least with my brother.
Giuseppe has always had a habit of coming up with half-baked ideas that he insists I help him with, and against my better judgment, I usually
do. Like the time when we were kids and he decided we needed to see if aliens really existed. He convinced me it was important to humanity that we stay up all night to see if we could send or receive some sort of communication. He rigged up something on his short wave radio that he was convinced would work, and to this day I have no idea what it was. All I know is that he was the person in charge of the radio, and I was the person in charge of direct contact. That meant I spent the night on the roof, and he spent the night in his room. When it got to be around four in the morning and I could hardly stay awake and had to pee, I climbed back into the house through the upstairs window and found Giuseppe sound asleep.
In his bed.
Snoring.
You’d think I would have learned from that experience, but through the years I have found myself being somewhat forgiving toward my brother. Even though he’s a few years older than I am, he acts like the second or third born child. Creative, disorganized and charismatic. He is the type of sensitive man that women always claim to want, but most of those in his past couldn’t handle it when he cried about famines in distant lands or the demise of the spotted toad. I’m thankful that he met his match in Janine, an equally sensitive and all around good person. Even better, he married her. Unfortunately, Janine shares most of his views regarding the paranormal, and even more unfortunately for me, he talks a lot about those views.
Frankly, he scares the bejesus out of me when he brings up ghosts, aliens and demons.
Not that I believe in any of that stuff.
“Apparently you two need some family time right now,” Kenny said. “I’ll come back later.” As he turned and walked out the door, it briefly flashed through my mind that Kenny’s diplomacy was uncharacteristic. I didn’t really care, though, because at that moment my focus was on making sure my brother understood that when I said no, I meant no.
I must’ve told him a thousand times I’m not doing ghost hunts with him anymore. Period.
“What the hell are you wearing?” Giuseppe demanded.
Momentarily thrown by the abrupt conversational switch, I didn’t know what to say. “Good morning to you, too. Yes, I’m fine, how about yourself?” Keep a Zen attitude, stay in the moment, and maintain balance, I told myself.
“How many times have I told you that color is not good for you? You can’t wear black, it’s all wrong for your skin tone and it throws Janine’s aura off. You have to wear positive colors, shades that reflect the energy of life.”
“I have to wear what’s clean and will keep me warm.” Janine was the main reason I worked at Scentsations, and she and I were friends, but I never once heard her talk about her aura. She talked about other people’s auras but never her own.
Giuseppe shook his head, clearly disgusted by my lack of understanding when it came to auras. “You can throw the day into chaos by not being careful about these things, you know.” He looked at me thoughtfully for a moment before adding, “Although it might work for tonight. Yes, that would be good.”
“I told you, I’m not doing it,” I said, glad I hadn’t gotten him a muffin from the bakery. I’d almost ordered him his favorite, lemon poppyseed, but Janine had him on a diet, and I didn’t want to get on her bad side. And right about now I had a feeling Giuseppe was going to say something I didn’t want to hear, so I was glad I hadn’t wasted the money.
“I have you scheduled to come out with us tonight on our latest paranormal event,” he said, turning away to open a box. I knew he was so busy unpacking inventory right now because he couldn’t look me in the eye.
“What if I don’t want to?” So much for my Zen attitude. “You know I hate doing those things. I can barely stay awake, and nothing ever happens.”
“We have an investigation, and I’m short an investigator. I need you to come to the house with us. I have a few new investigators, and they don’t understand the intricacies of all the equipment.”
“No.” I wouldn’t do it, no matter what he said. He couldn’t make me be part of that group if he offered me a million dollars.
I really should look for a new job instead of putting up with this manipulation.
“I’ll pay you fifty bucks.”
I hesitated. I hadn’t expected him to offer me money, so now I didn’t know what to do. Fifty dollars didn’t sound like a lot, but I was trying to save every little bit I could for a vacation. Of course Giuseppe used that to his advantage.
“I know it’s not a lot,” he said, looking up from the box, “but some extra cash will get you a little closer to buying that plane ticket you want.”
Damn him. He knew how much I wanted to go to Ireland, but working with those people always tried my patience—made me want to scream, actually. Ghost hunters can be weird.
“Tell me again why you’re doing this.”
“Why I’m doing what?” he asked.
“This group that you’ve put together. You must be losing money on this business. I’ve seen all the advertising you’ve done. That can’t be cheap.”
Giuseppe straightened to his full, six-foot height and rolled his shoulders. “We are truth seekers. We are investigators, and we have standards, which is more than I can say about some paranormal groups.”
My brother’s paranormal group, or ghost hunters, as they were commonly called, was known as AA Energy and Spirit Investigators. He started this little side business only after Kenny started his, which was called AAA Paranormal Investigators. Anyone who knows anything about alphabetical listings in the Internet yellow pages or old fashioned phone book would realize why my brother chose AA, even if it did mean he got more than a few phone calls from drunks looking to stop drinking.
I wasn’t finished. Other issues were bothering me. “Seriously, G, when are you going to ban Kenny from the store? Asking him to stay out is the best thing you can do. You don’t like him, and people don’t want to shop in a place where you guys are standing around arguing.” And I hated getting caught in the middle, but I kept my mouth shut about that.
Giuseppe scowled at me. “First of all, don’t call me G. You know I detest that almost as much as being called Joey. And second of all, it would be bad for business to do something like that. How would it look to the rest of the town if I forbid him from coming in here for no good reason? Kenny has his own business venture, I have mine. I can go into his if I want, he can come in here. That’s it. The end. Period.”
I put my hands up in front of me to ward off any more ranting. “Okay, fine, whatever you say. Where’s this thing going to be tonight?” I needed to change the subject if we were going to make it through the day working together. If anything caused a fight between us, it was Kenny.
“At the old McAllister place, the one over on Chartres Drive.”
I was shaking my head and backing away from him before he even finished his sentence.
“Have a good time,” I said.
“You agreed. Fifty bucks.”
“That was before I knew where you were going. Sorry, G, but there is no flippin’ way you’re going to get me to go into that house. Ever.”
Chapter Three
I was ten years old when the McAllister woman died. From that point until now her house had remained unlived in, completely deserted, with dusty old furniture that mice, raccoons or squirrels crawled inside to make a home. For whatever reason, no long-lost relatives came forward to claim the house, a major mystery since you would think a big old house in Connecticut was prime real estate. I’d always assumed the relatives didn’t want to brick up the entry to hell in the basement or whatever it was that made the house so darn creepy. It sat empty for years and gained a deserved reputation as a menacing place.
In fact, that reputation was so solid that not even area drug dealers or criminals used it as a hangout. Nobody wanted to go there.
Rumor had it that the house was built over an ancient burial site and was haunted even before the old lady kicked off. To my adult self, that rumor sounded lame. As a kid I’d believed it with my whole he
art. I didn’t know the history of the house, but I did know I was not inclined to step anywhere on, near or in it.
Not that I was chicken or anything, but the distinct memory of my thirteen-year-old self running out of the yard after hearing very clear snarls and growls coming from the basement made for an easy decision. They weren’t earthly snarls and growls, I’d like to add. They were demonic, definitely not-from-around-here sounds. I might claim I didn’t believe in the paranormal, but I wasn’t stupid either. I knew when to leave things alone, and this house needed to be left alone.
“I’ll give you sixty dollars.”
I shook my head. “Dude, that place is scary. You don’t have to go in there looking for things. Everyone knows it’s haunted.”
“Exactly,” Giuseppe said. “This is our chance to get some real proof of ghost activity, which could be groundbreaking. Don’t you see what an opportunity this is?”
“Nope. I see what a mistake this is.”
“It’s not scary anymore,” he wheedled.
“Really? It suddenly got un-scary? I didn’t know that could happen.” My brother was always good at making things up to fit any situation to his needs. This time it wasn’t going to happen. Whatever he said would not change my mind.
I am not going in there. Period.
“The old house has finally been sold to someone, and the new owners have been in and started to clean the place up. They’ve done a bunch of renovations.”
My silence was all the answer I would give him. I said no, I meant no.
“It looks nice in there,” he said. “They put in a new garden, and the inside has fresh paint and period furniture, with the hardwood floors all redone. The place sort of reminds me of that television show, what’s it called? Oh, yeah, Make It Pretty.”
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