Black Raven Inn: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 6)

by Rebecca Patrick-Howard

  Suddenly, Taryn felt drab and frumpy in her vintage calico dress, saddle shoes, and little brown cardigan. She’d washed and styled her hair but the humidity had frizzed it, leaving it poking out in every direction. She always looked much better in her head than she did in the mirror.

  “What a cute dress,” Ruby exclaimed as Taryn drew close to the table. “You always look so adorable. I wish I were thirty years younger so that I could wear your clothes!”

  It was as if the woman could read her mind, Taryn thought as she sat down.

  “Thank you,” she replied. “And here I was thinking I always feel so dowdy next to you!”

  Ruby took a sip of her ice tea and waved her off. “Oh, please. It’s not truly me. It’s just the fact that I’m old now and can get away with wearing a lot of things that I couldn’t when I was younger. Once you reach a certain age people are just impressed that you’re not going out in hair curlers.”

  Taryn wasn’t sold. Ruby was probably one of the best dressed women in the business. I was true, however, that she’d never resorted to sporting the western shirts with fringe, long skirts, and cowboy hats that a lot of other women coming up through the music scene of the 1960s and 1970s had been pressed to wear. Instead of a beehive or bouffant, she’d worn her hair long and loose and parted in the middle. Rather than long peasant skirts and shirts with fringe she’d worn black minis and halter tops.

  Ruby Jane had always been elegant, always been a lady, but had always danced to the beat of her own drum. Now that she was in her sixties and wore African-inspired caftans, southwestern jewelry, and silk saris she was simply carrying on with her own rhythm.

  “Do you have more pictures for me?” Ruby asked eagerly, once they’d ordered. “The others you gave me, the copies? Something happened to that SD card. I lost it. I’d be grateful if you could make me another copy.”

  “No problem,” Taryn replied. “I have images, but nothing that contains anything out of the ordinary.”

  Taryn watched the flicker in the other woman’s eyes, a sure sign of disappointment. It was a first for Taryn, the first time anyone had wanted her to seek the paranormal. Of all the times Miss Dixie had picked up on abnormal occurrences–now she wanted her to and she couldn’t.

  “I did take a picture of the canvases I’m working on,” Taryn said as she handed Ruby the SD card. “I’m actually finished with the courtyard scene. So you can see it.”

  Ruby accepted the card and closed her fingers around it.

  “We had fun in that courtyard, back in the day,” Ruby smiled, glancing down at her silverware. “Park would get out his guitar first and the other would be right behind him. They always waited to see what he was going to do. I was just learning to play back then. I still have trouble tuning. Sometimes I’d have my tambourine. We’d light a fire, pop open a case of beer, and sit around until dawn sometimes, just playing and laughing.”

  “Did you know he had a problem back then?” Taryn asked, then felt guilty for bringing it up.

  Ruby did not look offended, however. “I wasn’t naïve. I knew that there were drugs going around. I couldn’t have told you what they were or where they got them but I knew they were being used. We even had a road manager who used to hold onto them for the guys and kind of divvy them out to, you know, make sure they didn’t get caught with him at the airport or take too much.”

  “Where was he the night Parker died?”

  “At home, with his wife. I don’t think he’s ever forgiven himself for that.”

  “I imagine things were a lot different back then,” Taryn said, thinking of all the stories she’d heard about singers and the drug culture that was more open before the AIDS scare of the 80’s took over.

  Ruby nodded. “In many ways, yes. I never did any of that stuff. I barely drank. I was too serious, you see. I was so focused on my music. When we first went on tour, however, things we bad. I’d been asked to join the band because they felt like they needed a ‘girl singer’, as they called it, for harmony. They even stalked me a little bit. Someone told Park about me and he told the others and they kind of dressed incognito and showed up at a bar in the Village I was singing at one night. They wanted to listen to me without me knowing. Of course, I didn’t even know who they were. I completely clueless.”

  Taryn laughed at the idea of the men checking Ruby out, seeing if she had what it took to hang with them.

  “But I digress. When we went on that first tour, it was a mess in the beginning. They thought they were so rock and roll, you know? They didn’t need to rehearse, they didn’t need a song set, they didn’t need to get the act together. Winging it was part of the fun. We were actually booed off stage a lot.”

  Taryn winced. “Yikes.”

  “I whipped them into shape pretty fast. I finally told them that either we start rehearsing and getting our acts together and doing things my way or I was going back to New York and they could bite me.”

  “It must have worked!”

  “Yes, well.” Ruby sighed and took a bite of her omelet. “In hindsight it must have been the drugs making them responsible for a lot of that. I just thought they were carefree, free-spirited souls. It wasn’t until much later that I realized just how bad of shape Parker really was.”

  “He’d cleaned up, though, hadn’t he? There at the end?”

  “Yes, yes he had. He was doing well. We’d just finished recording that album and were getting ready to go back out on the road. He was clean, probably for the first time since I’d known him. His eyes were clearer, brighter somehow. He was quieter, maybe a little sadder, but he was dealing with things instead of just running away from them…”

  Taryn didn’t want to press any further. She was surprised Ruby had shared as much with her as she already had.

  Both women, lost in their own thoughts, worked steadily on their plates of food. The dining rooms were quiet but, in the back, Taryn could hear the sounds of pots and pans rattling and dishes being washed. The sound of laughter rang out over the country radio station that played softly in the background. Dolly Parton sang about memories that continued to haunt her while Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris harmonized. Taryn thought about the afternoon in the courtyard, when the voice had been right there in her ear.

  Before she could bring it up, however, Ruby stopped eating and exhaled slowly. “I do wonder what would’ve happened if Aker hadn’t been with Gloria that night.”

  Taryn’s thoughts were brought to a grinding halt.

  “What? Aker?”

  “Yes, he was our security guard, kind of our road wrangler when we were out on tour,” Ruby explained. “He’d been a cop but I lured him away. He was a big music fan, liked the Byrds, the Stones, some of the folk artists. Dylan. He liked running with the music scene. He toured with us twice and was getting ready to go back out again, but his wife was sick that night and we’d all taken the week off anyway. Kind of scattered in the wind, more or less. We were going to meet back up in Los Angeles in a couple of days.”

  “I knew you’d known Aker for a long time, but I didn’t realize he’d worked with you all,” Taryn said slowly.

  “Yes, up until Parker died. They were big buddies. Then he returned to the police force. Stayed with them until he was injured on the job and took mandatory retirement. I still take him out on the road with me.”

  Taryn needed some time to let this digest. But first…

  “Ruby, was there a woman there with Parker the night he died? A girlfriend maybe?”

  Ruby’s face clouded over and she looked down to study her plate. “No,” she replied at last. “Parker wasn’t seeing anyone at the time. There wasn’t anyone there with him. He was alone.”

  Taryn wanted to know more, to say more, but held herself back. Either Ruby knew something and didn’t want to share it with her or Ruby wasn’t going to share it at all. Either way, she’d need to tread lightly.

  “Ruby… I wasn’t sure how to tell you this, but a few days ago when I was working in t
he courtyard, I was looking at that little shrine of Parker’s and,” Taryn paused, her face growing hot.

  “Yes?” Ruby eagerly leaned forward, her eyes glistening.

  “A voice quoted a line from an old Irish prayer. And it was very, very close. Like, right on top of me. I could feel the breath on my skin.” Taryn felt goosebumps on her arms just thinking about it. “I wasn’t scared. In fact, it was kind of nice.”

  Ruby leaned back in her seat and exhaled loudly. “People have told me over the years that he’s still there, that he can’t leave. I don’t understand that. Parker would never be trapped anywhere. He never liked staying in one spot. He was always moving around, always on the go. But I’ve wondered why, after all these years, he’s never once come to me. No matter how much I’ve prayed and prayed, and cried for him to come see me and show me he’s okay.”

  “Maybe he can’t,” Taryn whispered, looking around the room to ensure nobody could hear them. They were still alone.

  “Do you think it was him, Taryn? Do you think it was Parker?”

  She wanted so badly to tell her yes, to tell her that her partner’s spirit was still on the grounds of that awful place, but she couldn’t be certain. And she wasn’t going to lie. “I don’t know,” Taryn replied honestly. “I wish I did. But if it is him, what do you think he meant by ‘remember’?”

  Ruby shook her head. “I wish I knew that. But I don’t. Can you find out for me? Can you help me? I’ve spent the past forty-six years trying to make peace with this. I’m afraid I never will, not until I can be sure he’s at peace.”

  “I’ll try,” Taryn promised her. “I’ll do my best.”

  Aker, she thought. Aker had spent time at that motel, had been friends with Parker.

  It wasn’t like he had to share anything with her, but she found it strange that, during their meal, he hadn’t mentioned knowing Parker at all. Very strange.

  “So what do you need from me?” Matt asked.

  “Research,” Taryn answered. “I want you to read anything you can about Parker Brown’s early life and then jump to the events on the night he died. I want to try to understand the psychology behind the drug use and figure out if anything happened that night that might have been missed.”

  “You think it wasn’t an overdose?” Matt asked. “From what you’ve told me, it sure sounds like it was.”

  “If that’s him hanging around the motel, then there’s a reason,” Taryn said. “I want to know what that reason is.”

  “Could just be that it was an accidental overdose, he didn’t mean to die, and he’s not ready to leave. That he thinks his life is still going on,” Matt reasoned.

  “Could be, could be. And it could be something else. Let’s cover our bases.”

  “Do you really think that Parker’s disgruntled spirit is making you manic, though? And messing with you by banging the door shut, knocking things over, and stuff? That doesn’t sound like a ghost that wants something from you. Not anything good, anyway.”

  “I don’t know,” Taryn replied. “I guess if he’s upset that he can’t move on, and mad that’s dead to begin with, then he could have some rage built up in him. Death does strange thing to the living–just think of what it might be doing to the dead.”

  “Now there’s a book,” Matt mused thoughtfully. “The Five Stages of Grief for the Dead: How to Enjoy Your Afterlife without Bugging the Living.”

  “I’d start carrying copies around with me.”

  Twenty-One

  With the courtyard completed, Taryn meant to get started on the lobby next.

  Her last experience with Room #5 had been a little too exciting for her taste. She was trying to learn to distance herself emotionally from some of the things that happened to her but, the truth was, she couldn’t. She took everything personally. The fear she’d initially experienced of the paranormal inviting itself into her life wasn’t quite as consuming as it has been in the beginning but she was still only human; she still got frightened, still had trouble sleeping after something unsettled her, and looked over her shoulder a lot to ensure nothing was behind her.

  Even more than the fear was the sensitivity she felt to the emotions the experiences brought about. She’d yet to meet a jolly, happy spirit. Just like the living, they dragged their baggage with them and she was more or less their luggage handler on the connecting flight.

  Sometimes the sadness, fear, and anger became too much for her. After Jekyll Island she’d learned to take breaks, cool herself down a little.

  Distance herself.

  She’d planned on doing that with Room #5.

  It wasn’t quite working.

  Instead, it just pulled out the big guns.

  It took a lot of creative energy, and more than a few hours researching hotels constructed in the same time period, to recreate the lobby. Considering the sorry shape it was now in, even Taryn was having trouble seeing past the ruin to what it must have once looked like.

  It couldn’t have always been that bad. Right?

  She’d once worked on a lodge out west for six weeks. It was once of those places built for a state park, back when families used to load everyone up in the car and take them on grand tours of the Grand Canyon and Death Valley, stopping at every state line to file the tired kids out one by one and position them in front of the “welcome” sign to pose for the sake of posterity. Back before roadside motor lodges and pancakes were replaced by Disney cruises and all-you-can eat buffets.

  The lodge in question was run down and neglected and, though not without hope, a far cry from the spit and polish high rises of nearby Las Vegas–those overwhelming monstrosities that took up ten acres of land and had you worn out from their colorful, dizziness-inspiring carpets and two-mile hike to the exit before you even made it out to the blistering heat rising from the pavement of the Strip.

  She’d been hired to paint the lobby. At one time the lobby had sported an Art Deco style, somewhat out of place in the desert’s simple coarseness but architecturally pleasing just the same. Bits of that Art Deco still existed in a few of the light fixtures that managed to hide from the multiple renovations throughout the years, but, for the most part, by the time Taryn got to it, the lobby was a mishmash of clashing colors, styles, and textures. It looked like ten contestants with over-inflated egos from “Design Star” had all drawn ten different time periods out of a box and were instructed to use nothing but items found in a landfill.

  And… go!

  “The heat here gets to a lot of people,” the hotel’s general manager had warned her. “Between it and the glare of the sun, some people find they have a lot of trouble this time of year.”

  It was true she’d gone through more than her fair share of Excedrin Migraine that summer, but the temperature and sunlight had nothing to do with it. She still couldn’t hear the phrase “mid-century modern” without being reminded of the awful uncomfortable, stained, (once) white chairs that flanked the beautiful hand-carved fireplace (painted magenta during what had to have been someone’s acid trip in the 1960s).

  Just about every unique, original feature in that lobby had been destroyed, tainted, ruined, or removed. It had been incredibly difficult for her to see past the heinous interior design and sad neglect the lack of funds had caused. It was deteriorating at a rapid pace.

  Still, the old girl had some spunk left in her and eventually, once Taryn got to know her and became familiar with her bones through the eyes of her own imagination and Miss Dixie, she’d been able to work with what she had. The result had been a glorious window into the past, a stunning recreation of a lobby that spoke not just of a style popularized in a decade known for fun and opulence, but of a more innocent time when families could still be charmed by the unpretentious entertainment provided by the simplicity of nature. When board games together in the lobby, not fast Wi-Fi, had brought everyone together in the evenings.

  She could not see past the ugliness of Black Raven Inn’s lobby.

  “It’s not y
ou, it’s me,” she told the drab, dreary little place.

  She didn’t think that anything could make it look better–nothing short of a complete overhaul and massive renovation.

  The space was too small, the layout too awkward (the weird “L” shape made it cramped for the guests checking it and gave the staff little room in which to maneuver), and the lack of adequate windows made it too dark.

  “I’m just going to recreate it from scratch,” she declared, scrapping her original idea of using the old photos of the motel for inspiration. “We’ll call it more of a ‘inspired by’ painting than a ‘recreation.’”

  She didn’t think Ruby would mind.

  With new resolution, she set off to start faintly sketching her painting with confidence. She’d make it the best darn lobby that the Black Raven Inn had ever seen.

  Not that it would take much.

  She’d barely drawn the outline of the perimeter, however, when the low, mournful singing began permeating the room. It drifted through the walls, soft and low at first, a man’s sweet, warbling tenor. Taryn hesitated with her charcoal held aloft, barely breathing. She hardly dared to breathe.

  The singing voice was not pitch perfect; it was tentative and reedy, almost thin in some places. She listened as it strained to hit the higher notes and then fell dipped back down, catching itself in its hesitation. It probably would not have been played on today’s radio, at least not before an over-zealous producer got ahold of it with some auto pitch and made the artist suffer through endless takes.

  Still, there was something soothing and beautiful about its frailty. Under the imperfections was a heavy emotional undercurrent that enraptured Taryn and threatened to lift her off the ground and carry her away. The sadness engulfed her, playing to her sensitivities, until she wanted to cry. He was singing nonsense, something about dancing and maybe even a bird or a likewise peculiar entity but she didn’t care. The beauty of the music was immeasurable.