by Etta Faire
Finding Your Client
I let Jackson have it as soon as we were alone in my car and out of earshot of everyone else.
“You nodded back there when I said I’d have to check to see if I could find her,” I said as I pulled out of the parking lot. “I thought that meant you knew where she was.”
He was in my passenger’s seat. His face faded into the sunlight streaming in through the window. “I nodded because I agreed that you would have to check around to see if you could find her, Carly doll. But you’re right. She sounds like the perfect next client and you probably need that scrapbook.”
“We need that scrapbook,” I reminded him.
“I’ve passed the curse along. My leg of the race is over.”
“Yet you’re still here.”
“As a mentor.”
“Well, that would be my luck,” I said, hitting my turn signal a little too hard as I pulled into traffic. “The universe finally sends me a mentor in life, and it’s the snobby, rich jerk who cheated on me.”
I came to a stop sign. It was a clear day. A soft summer breeze blew through the trees as another round of tourists in Bermuda shorts and tank tops crossed the street in front of me. I waited patiently as they passed. It was good to see tourism returning to Landover after the bird attacks.
A small community park was just to my right, past the stop sign, and I pulled through the intersection and over to it, parking next to the swing sets.
“I guess there’s only one thing to do now,” I said. “Find her.”
Jackson was sitting on the manilla folder from Mandy’s case, and I took a deep breath, stuffed my hand through his ghostly figure, gritting my teeth when the chill of touching him shot through my arm, and grabbed the folder.
“My, my,” Jackson said when my hand passed through him. “If only I were alive to enjoy that.”
I ignored him and opened the folder. “This folder contains all the locations the film crew stayed at, visited, or used in scenes. We are going to stop by each of these places until we find the one Mandy’s haunting at.”
“What if she’s not haunting at any?” he asked.
I skimmed the pages, making the best route in my mind for the addresses, starting with the one downtown. “I don’t believe in coincidences,” I said as I punched an address into my phone’s GPS. “I have a feeling she’s looking for us too.”
Fortunately, they only filmed at one place downtown. According to the paper, it was the dive bar across the street from the bank.
Notes had been added and scribbled into the pages as the years went by, and I saw the bar was now called Hunters Sports Bar.
Like most other buildings downtown, Hunters was a simple red-brick building. The only difference between it and the bank across the street was the huge sign in front with a red-eyed, drunken moose holding a beer stein.
After what felt like five minutes of my ex critiquing my parallel parking skills, I finally got into the only spot outside of the bar in between two groups of motorcycles. Fortunately, I avoided hitting any of them.
I pushed my car door open before I could rethink the whole thing. The humidity pummeled me instantly, like it wanted to make sure I knew never to pick this outfit again. It was a point well taken.
My pants stuck to the back of my thighs like cellophane, and my sleeveless blouse wasn’t doing much to cool me down.
I didn’t get the sense Mandy was here, either. Still, I needed to check. So, I swallowed my pride, grabbed the metal door handle, and went inside.
It was a random Sunday afternoon, but most of the spots along the bar were filled with balding older men in leather vests with beer guts, tight t-shirts, and a little too much time on their hands, probably avoiding going home where their wives might tell them to mow the lawn.
They stared at me with a healthy dose of “get the hell out” as soon as I entered.
Various animal heads lined the wall above the bar. A couple deer, an antelope, some moose.
Jackson was right behind me. “I stand corrected. Hunters Bar is just the spot I would haunt if I were a middle-aged mom looking to have fun in the afterlife.”
I ignored the obvious truth coming from my mentor and somehow got myself to go up to the bar.
I already knew I was taking this case. So, I needed to find my client one way or the other and start gathering clues.
The bartender was another bald man about 40 with a thick neck who looked at me like I was selling something. And I had to admit, I did not look the part of someone coming in for a drink.
“Can I help you?” he asked, eyebrow raised, as he wiped out a glass with what was hopefully a clean rag.
“I’m not here to drink.”
“Then we don’t want any,” he said, looking me up and down. “And we already know Jesus.”
Jackson snickered by my side to let me know he agreed with the assessment.
“I’m just a fan,” I said, quickly thinking of what to say before someone asked me to leave. “I heard they used this bar in the filming of Camp Dead Lake back in the 80s. Is that true?”
Framed photos lined the back of the bar just below the moose heads, and the man thumb-pointed toward one of them while he dried the glass. In the photo, young people, and a few older ones, had their arms around each other and their drinks raised at the bar. Two 20-year-old blondes, one with a mullet, the other with a Bon Jovi hairstyle, and both in sundresses, were right in the middle. Many people had signed the photo at the bottom.
I did not see anyone who looked like Mandy, but I pulled out my phone and took a picture like a genuine fan would.
I nodded. “Wow. Were you there?” I asked.
He glared at me like he could not believe I’d just asked him that. “I was ten when that was taken. My father bought the bar in ’94. But Bob over there…” he pointed to a chubby balding man with a bushy gray beard about 70 sitting at the end of the bar. “Bob was one of the extras.”
Bob raised his glass and tilted his head. “Trust me, young lady, you don’t want to know the legend of Camp Dead Lake,” he said in an almost pirate kind of voice.
The bartender laughed. “You’ve still got it, Bob.”
I walked closer to Bob. “I heard Mandy Smalls was murdered during the making of the movie. What was it like when that happened?”
He tipped his beer up to the hole in his beard that I was assuming was his mouth. “I don’t know. Why’re you asking about that?”
“Just wondering,” I said, shrugging.
He wiped his beard with the back of his arm. “It kind of changed the way we viewed that whole movie, I’ll tell ya that much. We stopped talking about it. We just wanted them out.”
“So no one thought it was a local who’d killed Mandy?” I asked.
“No,” he said, his eyes narrowing into slits. “And we still don’t.”
“Who else around town had a part in the movie? Do you remember?” I asked.
He got up and walked away without answering. And I knew it was time to leave, so I made my way to the door.
The bartender yelled to me as I was leaving. “If you want to know about that movie, go see Crazy Hank. He’ll tell you all about it.” He laughed like that was funny, turning to Bob who did not laugh.
Bob glared at his friend.
“A promising lead,” my ex said.
I stopped at the door and turned back toward the bar. “Do you have a last name for Crazy Hank?” I asked.
The bartender looked at Bob, then shook his head no.
“Well, that’s probably for the best, anyway,” my ex said as we stepped outside. “We don’t need to meet the crazy one in that particular friend group.”
Sunlight burned my eyes, a huge contrast to the dim lighting of the bar. I blinked into it.
My ex was right. But I was still going to find Crazy Hank.
I typed everything into my notes app on my way out to my Civic, proud of myself for at least collecting some information. I carefully maneuvered my car ar
ound the motorcycles that surrounded me, ready to head to my next stop.
“We’ll go to the house on the lake where most of the filming happened next. Then, we’ll stop by the Shop-Quik to get some popcorn. I am going to find Camp Dead Lake online, and we are going to watch a movie tonight.”
“What fun. Biker bars and a b-movie all in the same day, and we’re not even sure we have a client yet,” he said.
I didn’t bother to comment. I hated it when he was right.
The house on the lake was just as huge as I thought it’d be, not as fancy as one of the gazillion-dollar mansions like the Donovans lived in, but much nicer than 70 percent of the homes in the area. It was a 1980s dark brown sprawling two-story ranch house.
“I guess this is where she died,” I said, closing the folder.
Both the American and Wisconsin flags waved to us at the beginning of the steep, long driveway. A large black truck sat at the bottom where the turnaround was, so I stopped at the top, debating about where to park.
I knew I needed to get out and walk around. If Mandy was haunting here she would have to sense my presence and want to come with me. I couldn’t just sit in my car.
But that felt a lot like intruding on the owners of the home. Whoever lived here now might not have been a part of things in the 1980s. And I seriously doubted Mandy was haunting this house, anyway. I could not picture anyone haunting the place they’d made their last movie at, especially not after being strangled to death.
But then, ghosts were strange as far as people went. I parked near the top, right next to a couple of signs. One said “No Soliciting,” the other “Beware of Guns.”
I pushed my car door open. It seemed to make an unusually loud creaking sound this time. “I might need a ghostly distraction if things go wrong,” I whispered under my breath to my ex.
Jackson floated out of the car behind me. “I don’t see any reason why you would need my help,” he said, pointing to the signs. “It’s not like you look like a solicitor.” He chuckled a little.
“They won’t even know I’m here,” I replied.
Cicadas buzzed in the surrounding bushes, and a chill went up my spine even though it was a warm day.
I thought I saw movement in one of the windows, so I picked up the pace. I needed to make this fast.
“Mandy,” I whisper-yelled into the greenery around me as my clearance-find sandals smacked the pavement in heavy, loud slaps because they didn’t strap right and were practically falling off my feet.
I knew I was being too loud, so I tried doing a half-jog on the balls of my feet, allowing the bottom part of the sandal to drag the ground quietly. But I stepped on one of the straps, and my foot twisted while the other one jogged, and I had to do one of those out-of-control running movements down the paved hill to try to catch my balance. I waved my arms around, but it was no use. My legs felt tangled, like they weren’t moving right. My heart raced and I think I may have moaned.
I crashed right into the back of the truck sitting at the bottom of the driveway next to the house. Pain shot over my right shoulder and the alarm whirled and beeped in loud bursts that could probably be heard clear across the lake.
“I would yell for you to run,” my ex said by my side. “But from what I just witnessed, I’m not sure you have that down in life.”
The front door opened and three teenage boys poked their heads out of the door, two blondes, the third with brown hair. “Kyle, I told you. That was your truck,” one blonde said. The brown-haired kid clicked the alarm and stepped out onto the porch in shorts and a t-shirt.
“You okay?” he asked me, probably because I was still holding onto my shoulder and moaning.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry about that. I think I have the wrong address, anyway.” I put my head down and made my way up the hill without even trying to explain myself.
“Are you looking for Deedee? Are you a friend of my mom’s?” the brown-haired boy asked, and I turned around and glared at him in the same way the bartender had glared at me when I got his age wrong.
I couldn’t tell them the truth. I couldn’t tell anyone. I had promised Caleb, and I wanted to see that scrapbook.
“Is this about church?” the brown-haired kid yelled.
I nodded, and headed back up the steep driveway to my car, clutching my shoulder the entire way.
I had been hoping the ghost would just have come right out and said hi if she were here.
But my mission to have Mandy Smalls be my next client was looking bleak.
Somehow, I got into my car and refrained from acknowledging my ex-husband laughing in the passenger’s seat.
“At least you didn’t get shot,” he said.
The kids were still staring at the “mom” getting into her car and trying to turn around, which took me a good five minutes to do at the top of the driveway with everyone staring. I was trying not to have to go down to the turnaround at the bottom to do it, and I really didn’t want to hit the gun sign.
I finally pulled out and onto the main drive again. But I wasn’t sure I was up for a movie, after all.
“Thank you for making your presence known back there,” a woman’s voice said from the back seat after about a minute of driving. “I’ve been waiting a long time for that. What took you so long?”
Chapter 3
Mandy Smalls
I checked my rearview mirror. Mandy Smalls was just as beautiful as her headshot.
Her acid-washed denim jacket made her blue eyes pop even as she faded into my gray upholstery. Her hair had been teased to 80s heights, curling slightly around her temples to frame her round face.
She had a warm “mom” smile, like she might have a snack in her pocket, and a part of me instantly liked her for that reason alone.
I introduced myself.
Her voice was no nonsense, yet soft. “I’ve been waiting thirty years for a powerful medium to come to Landover to figure this out for me. I was starting to give up hope…”
She leaned into the front seat. The air grew chillier the closer she got. “I thought if I haunted at the Lockes’ house, I’d figure my murder out. But I didn’t figure out squat. As time went on, I forgot stuff. My memories jumbled together. I slept more and more until I became kind of a faded memory myself.”
Her voice trailed off at the end, in dramatic flair, probably from years in the theater.
“Well, I’m here now,” I said.
She went on. “And I’m already starting to remember everything. Yes, yes,” she said, rubbing her hands together. “It’s all coming back to me now. Ask me anything.”
I half-smiled, a little suspicious about a ghost who claimed to remember everything after being asleep for so long. Most ghosts had terrible memories outside of a channeling.
The tree-lined narrow road that wound around the lake was full of potholes and uncovered roots that had created uneven patches, and my Civic hit every bump like it was a mini-crash. I tried to keep my eyes on the potholes, and not on the ghost in my rearview mirror.
“You said you were haunting at the Lockes’ house. Tell me about that house and the Lockes,” I said.
She tapped her chin with the tip of her index finger. “The Lockes were our friends from college who owned the house we were filming at. They gave us a great deal on the place. Ruth and her husband… Barry. Ruth and Barry Locke. That’s right. I told you I was remembering everything. We were going to film and wrap up the movie in three weeks in September. The property was actually an old campground and even had a small wooden shed we could use for reviewing the film’s footage.”
I did not tell her that was likely the shed she was found dead in with film everywhere.
She went on. “My husband’s name was Graham,” she said slowly, like she wasn’t quite sure. “We were married for twenty years. I remember we were staying in Barry and Ruth’s guest house with our teenage daughter… because she was a counselor there at the camp. Camp Red Lake. The locals called it Camp Dead Lake because of
the rumors.”
A squirrel ran across the road, catching me off guard, and I slammed on my brakes to avoid hitting it. I needed to stop looking in my rearview mirror so much. “I’m going to guess that last part was part of the movie. The movie was called Camp Dead Lake.”
“That’s right,” she said, chuckling a little. “Of course it was. I did have a daughter, though. A daughter and a son. They were both in college at Landover University. I’m remembering things perfectly now.”
She wrung her hands together, and I saw she had about ten silver bangles lining both of her wrists, a la Madonna. They shimmered in the sunlight like they were real, but did not make a noise when they moved. “I think I might have been going through empty-nest syndrome. Graham tried to cheer me up. He told me we were going to start a new chapter in our lives. We would visit our kids in Landover and make a movie at Camp Red Lake.” She chuckled. “I mean, we were making it at Barry and Ruth’s house. Landover Lake.”
I turned off the narrow road that twisted around the lake and back onto the main one heading to the Shop-Quik. I already knew I was going to have to watch this movie to know what was real and what was scripted, and I couldn’t watch a movie without popcorn.
Mandy’s memories were still jumbled, and I needed to start by sorting out the information.
She was rambling on about college now.
“Graham and I met in college. We were both theater geeks. Oh god, how I pretended to need extra help on my roles just so we could spend time together. But then, when my whole sorority house suddenly came under attack by demons…”
She shook her head at the ceiling of my Civic, thinking about it. “No. No. That was from Death Party Sorority House, of course.”
“Maybe it would be helpful,” Jackson said from the passenger’s seat, “if you tried to focus on the night of your murder.”
Mandy was wearing a bright pink t-shirt under her jacket. She straightened it out, even though it did not need straightening, and sat up. “Good idea. I remember a lot about that, especially the notes I received ahead of time. All on blue paper.”
