by Etta Faire
I didn’t see him or Mandy either. I felt alone, and I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
What if these extra-strength ghost repellant strands worked a little too well? And my life went back to normal?
I already missed my paranormal life and it wasn’t even gone yet.
I ran a red-stained glove over one of the strands. The door to my bedroom was partially open and I could see my bed and nightstand peeking back at me. I couldn’t help but think about the fire from 1962, and how that poor woman had been passed out in a bedroom, much like my own, unable to get out, unable to save herself.
And then, to have the newspapers and everyone else in Landover blame her for it.
“Illegal substances were suspected, but criminal charges would not be pursued,” like they could pursue criminal charges against a deceased person.
Something hit me. I jumped down from my chair, causing the floor to shake just a little.
I ran down both sets of stairs and over to my laptop that was still sitting on the dining room table next to Mandy’s folder, remembering last second to peel my gloves off so I wouldn’t get red stains all over my keyboard.
I threw it open and brought up my search history until I found the beatnik article again. My heart raced when I scanned the article and found the part I was looking for:
According to Officer Alan Krebs of the Landover Police Department, illegal substances are suspected but criminal charges will not be pursued.
Krebs. The name was very familiar.
I brought up a new browser tab and typed in Alan Krebs’s name into the search engine. A couple articles came up. One was from 1967.
Landover Police Officer Killed By Drunk Driver
During Traffic Stop
Officer Alan Krebs was speaking to the driver on the side of the road when the collision happened early Monday morning.
“It was just a routine traffic stop,” Officer Glen Bellings said. “I was supposed to be working that shift, actually. Alan switched with me. He was like that. Aways there when you needed him. Like a brother to me.”
Officer Krebs leaves behind a wife, Gina, and two sons, Hank and Lyle.
At least now I knew why Glen Bellings had botched the case and covered for Crazy Hank. Why he’d changed the coroner’s report to fit with Hank’s alibi. Why he’d hidden the blue glove instead of entering it into evidence.
It was more than the fact Hank was a local.
Hank was probably like a son to him.
Still, having a less than satisfactory childhood was not an excuse to enter into a counterculture lifestyle.
I looked over at my own bloodied blue gloves sitting on the edge of the kitchen sink. If anyone saw them, they would think I had murdered someone.
And sometimes looks can be deceiving.
Hank may have looked like the murderer, even to the police who covered for him, but something wasn’t sitting right about it with me.
He just didn’t have a motive. Plus, the crime scene had been staged with film everywhere after Mandy’s murder. The killer probably would have noticed the glove during the staging. And if the killer had been Hank, he would have gotten rid of his own glove.
I pulled the folder and my notebook from my purse and spread everything out on the table again. I was starting from square one. The interviews, the photos, the notes I’d taken and the articles I’d printed off at the library.
I was thankful for peace and quiet. I needed to figure out this case, and even though Jackson thought he was the Sherlock in these investigations, he was really more like the annoying distraction.
I was particularly interested in the fire pit photo. That pit had been empty the night of Mandy’s death, but it was filled with what was probably the burned murder weapon and the burned film reel from 1962.
I held the photo up to the light.
Just like I thought, you could see the remnants of a burned rope and a movie reel with an “H” and a “5” still visible on its surface, probably for Home Movies 1975, which I knew really contained the footage from the 1962 fire.
It was time to up this game. There were three people who wanted that movie burned. And two of them owned that ski rope.
I held up the photo of the film in the shack next, the one with the brown leather belt-looking strap sitting in the middle of the ruined film and the sandaled foot in the background. That had been Barry’s foot. No doubt about that.
He had even worn those Birkenstocks in my channeling. And now that I studied the photo closer, I knew exactly what that brown leather strap was, too.
Caleb’s words echoed through my mind that whatever I did I was not supposed to go see the Lockes.
But, I knew I had to.
Chapter 32
Whatever You Do, Don’t Do It
I parked at the top of the driveway the next day, right by the sign about the guns. This time I took my time walking down to the large brown house at the bottom of the driveway, and not just because I didn’t want a repeat of my fall last time.
I also wanted to remember being Mandy. I looked over at the guest house she had ransacked in the channeling. It was still there, the lake not too far off in the distance. The shack Mandy was murdered in was gone, and I couldn’t blame them for getting rid of that one.
My sandals smacked the pavement again as I made my way to the door, which was a trendy red color now. I stared at it for a minute, wondering what in the world I was going to say.
I needed to play my cards right.
I took a deep breath and went to knock, but rang the doorbell instead, just to see if it still sounded like the Big Ben chimes. It did.
One of the blonde kids from before opened it. He couldn’t have been older than 16. “Hey, I remember you,” he said. “You’re a friend of my mom’s, right?”
“No,” I said. “I came to talk to Ruth and Barry Locke.”
“You’re friends with my grandparents?” He snickered to himself that I was older than he’d even thought.
A woman about 45 with short dark hair came up behind him. I assumed she was Ruth’s daughter. She looked a lot like Ruth. “Oh no,” she said to the boy. “I think that’s the medium.”
She smiled at me, then closed the door right in my face. “We heard you’re investigating, and we don’t want to help out, thank you,” she yelled through the closed door.
Great. Caleb was likely warning people now. We were supposed to be in an investigation together, and he was turning up the heat on my simmering pot. Sabotaging things.
I yelled back. “Yes, I’m the medium. Yes, I made contact with Mandy. She told me all about baby Felix.”
I could hear the kid relaying my message to the rest of the house. “Baby Felix? She just said something about a baby named Felix. She’s crazy. The only Felix that we know is not a baby. He’s Grandpa’s friend.”
I sat on the porch for a few minutes. I felt like Hank with his poster, not welcome on the set, but refusing to leave. The sun seemed extra strong today, making a trickle of sweat form along my hairline.
I wiped it away and got up, turning to walk back up the hill just as the door opened.
Ruth stood in the doorway, smaller than I remembered her being, but just as stylish. She was in white slacks and a coral blouse with a matching silk scarf tied perfectly around her neck. Barry appeared behind her, his hand on her shoulder.
“Come in,” he said. “We can talk in the patio room.”
I walked through their house, which should have felt familiar by now, but it didn’t look or feel the same at all. No clunky media centers, no pink accents. But the biggest difference was that it was now full of teenagers, eating sandwiches in the living room while they played X-Box. Beach towels were draped along the dining room chairs.
The old Barry and Ruth would have freaked out over that one, demanding a proper cleaning service.
They motioned for me to go into the patio room. Like the rest of the house, it was a modern version of what it used to b
e. No puffy oversized couches anymore, just sleek, streamlined red patio sofas.
I sat in the one they motioned to. They sat next to each other across from me. Their daughter peeked her head into the room. “You let me know if you need anything,” she said to her parents. They nodded and she scowled at me a second before sliding the door shut.
It was strange seeing Ruth and Barry now, as 70-something-year-olds, after seeing them in their 40s just a few short days ago.
Ruth’s hair was bottle copper brown now, with hints of gray, still short. Her colorful silk scarf was like a water color frame around her face.
Barry sat forward. “When we heard about a week or so ago that there was a medium investigating Mandy’s case…”
I gulped. It hadn’t been Caleb who had tipped them off. Mrs. Nebitt was the only one who knew back then.
Mum was certainly not the word, after all.
His voice was slow and calm. He was choosing his words carefully. “Ruth and I discussed what our part might be and if we even needed to have a part. We don’t believe in getting involved.”
Ruth looked down at her pale taupe nails.
“I know you like to help out,” I said to Ruth. “You used to have a psychology column. You invited the custodian to come to the set to meet Mandy…”
Ruth’s eyes bugged. She twisted a finger into the end of her scarf. “It was my idea. I said we shouldn’t tell you anything, not unless we thought you were legitimate.” She looked at her husband. “But if you know about baby Felix and the custodian, then I think you’re probably legitimate.”
“I hope you don’t mind if we ask a few questions of our own about that,” Barry chimed in.
Ruth nodded. “Tell us what it is you think you know about baby Felix.”
There it was. Mediums always had to prove themselves. Heart surgeons never had to do this. “I know Mandy was the one who saved him from the fire at your boss’s in 1962, Barry. I know you were babysitting him at the time, Ruth. I know about the footage of the fire labeled ‘Home movies 1975.’ And, I know why you let Graham and Mandy make the movie here at your house. Graham was calling in his one favor. It was blackmail.”
Ruth’s eyes bulged again. She pushed her lips together. “Thank you. That should do,” she said, pulling her finger out of her scarf so she could smooth the creases in her trousers.
“But, I don’t think those are the only secrets you’ve been hiding,” I said. “And you need to come clean.”
They stared at me. They were definitely a couple who weren’t giving up their secrets unless they absolutely had to.
I pulled out the pictures of the crime scene from my purse. “Mandy told me that this isn’t exactly the way things looked to her that night. In other words, her crime scene was staged after her death, but before police got there. I’d like you to tell me what you remember when you arrived on the scene.”
Barry coughed a little into his beard. His facial hair was thinner now. He was thinner now too, and almost completely gray.
I thought they might both refuse to even look at the photos. But they looked over. Ruth quickly looked away. “That looks exactly like I remember it. Film everywhere.”
“Do you remember seeing a blue glove?” I asked.
“Yes,” Ruth said. “We told the police about it. The sheriff convinced us it was probably film we saw. I remember that now.”
“All this ruined film was planted by the killer after Mandy died,” I said.
I looked at them, hoping to see a twitch or a bugged eye. I wasn’t expecting a confession, but they didn’t even shift in their seat.
“Interesting,” Barry said.
I went on. “And, I know Mandy wasn’t strangled by film that night. It was wrapped around her neck after the fact as part of the staging. She was murdered by one of your yellow ski ropes.”
Ruth gasped. “How in the world could you have known what she was strangled with?”
I didn’t think it was a good idea to tell her that I saw it in a channeling.
I pulled out a stack of copies of photos from my purse, then sifted through them until I found the one of the burned rope. It had been in the fire ring with the remains of the film reel. You could still see the “ho” in home and the 5 in 75 on the metal of the reel.
“I hope you’re not implying that we burned those,” Ruth said. Barry put his hand on her knee, and she stopped talking. I wondered if it was code for “Let’s let the lawyers handle this.”
“I know Home Movies 75 was really the reel with the 1962 fire footage on it. Graham was bringing it with him and promised to destroy it after the one favor. His one favor was making the movie. But the Camp Dead Lake film was destroyed. I’m just wondering why the home movie was burned when the favor had not been completed? Did you two find the home movie and burn it?”
They didn’t say anything. They didn’t flinch or look at each other.
I went back to my stack of copies and pulled out another photo of Mandy’s crime scene. It was a close-up of the film all over the floor, a bare foot in Birkenstocks in the background.
Barry shifted in his seat when he saw his very distinctive shoe.
“This is obviously at a time when the police are supposed to be the only ones here. They’re investigating the crime scene. Yet, here you are in the background.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, through gritted teeth to his wife. “I’m not sure what you’re implying, but if you want any more of our help, you’re going to have to go through our lawyer.”
He stood up to leave, looking over at Ruth to join him. She didn’t stand up, didn’t even look at him. After a few seconds, he sat back down.
“I noticed something strange in this photo,” I said, tapping the small brown leather piece that was barely visible in between the bits of torn film pieces. “I originally thought this was a belt. It’s not in any of the other photos. And it wasn’t logged into evidence. Same with the blue glove and some other things. Did you see this?”
They didn’t say anything, so I went on. “I’m guessing it wasn’t logged into evidence because someone picked it up before it was noticed. I’m guessing it was this man right here in Birkenstocks popping in to ask the police if he could get something from the main part of the house.”
Ruth sat forward, almost falling off the red couch cushion. She caught herself and moved back again. “We don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We all know that’s Barry’s Birkenstock.”
He looked at the photo and shook his head. “Everyone wore those back then.”
I didn’t elaborate. We both knew I could probably prove it. I pointed to the leather piece sticking out from the film. “I also know that’s a bracelet that you took, and that I hope you still have,” I said, putting all my photos back into my purse.
“What makes you think we have some sort of bracelet?” Ruth laughed.
“Let’s just say I know how you and your friends operate with your secrets and favors. You knew this would be good to hold as insurance for your own secrets. Maybe you even did your own blackmail. Who knows? Who cares? This is Mandy’s life we’re talking about.”
Ruth only fidgeted with her scarf. Barry shook his head.
I went on. “We all know what I’m talking about.” I didn’t say what I was thinking. I only had a hunch about things, so I couldn’t tell them directly. I didn’t want this to get all over town when it was still only a hunch and I hadn’t had a chance to confirm it, and tell Caleb.
You couldn’t trust anyone in Landover to keep a secret, including me.
Barry stood up. “Good luck with your investigation,” he said. His lumberjack-looking face didn’t seem nearly as intimidating now, 30 years later. “It was very nice to meet you. Please tell Mandy we didn’t have anything to do with her murder, but that we’re very sorry it happened.”
Ruth looked around. “Is she here? Right now?”
I shook my head no. “I have extra-strength ghost repellant in my pocket,” I
explained.
She nodded, but in that therapist way, like she didn’t really understand my problem but didn’t want to set me off about it either.
Ruth leaned into me. “Just let her know I’m sorry I was terrible to her those last days. I was uptight about so many little things back then. How the house looked. How inconvenienced we were with the filming.”
She motioned a shaky, frail hand around her patio room. “You can probably tell that I’ve learned to prioritize a little in life. It’s what I always told my clients to do, but I never did it myself. I thought I was, but I was really just controlling things, taking over, being miserable with my schedules and agendas.” She paused. I could tell she believed me about my mediumship abilities now. She was mainly talking to Mandy.
She twisted her finger into her scarf again. “And, I let secrets get between friendships. It might be time to stop doing that one.”
Barry put his hand on her shoulder, and her smile shrunk just a little. I could tell they were done talking without lawyers.
Chapter 33
Stages
I could hardly believe I had to go into work. All I wanted to do was go home and look through my evidence so I could confirm my suspicions. My real life was getting in the way of my paranormal one again.
Rosalie was sitting on one of her stools, a large feather duster in her hand. She was dusting the new bird repellant that hadn’t had time to collect dust yet.
“How’s the extra-strength ghost repellant working out for you?” she asked when she saw me come through the door. I didn’t want to tell her that I was a little worried it was working too well. I hadn’t seen either ghost since I brought the stuff out of my car.
“It’s great,” I said, mindlessly reaching into the pocket of my skinny jeans to touch the still-sticky, extra-strength sachets in there.
She straightened one of the jars ever so slightly so it faced exactly forward.
