Chasing Angels (Teagan Doyle Mysteries Book 1)

by Karin Kaufman

  She pressed her lips together, thought a moment, then went on, directing her words solely at Berg. “He said, ‘That old crippled minister, he knows all about murder.’ So I was shocked and asked what he meant, and all he said was, ‘You don’t have to pull the trigger with your own hand to shoot someone in the head. Even someone you say you love.’ Then he smiled—and like, the creepiest smile I’ve ever seen.”

  Kinda bad? It sounds kinda bad? I could’ve grabbed the woman and propelled her rear end out the door. The only thing that saved her from me was that she had no idea how she’d driven a knife into Berg’s tender heart. She couldn’t have known. Until today I wouldn’t have understood the cruelty of her words.

  And cripple? The next time I saw Nickle, he was going to chew his own words with his diseased teeth and swallow them.

  “Very interesting,” Berg said, his gaze lingering on Nicole, giving her a chance to say more.

  Fire-steel. The sympathy card Berg received on what would have been Jack’s seventieth birthday.

  This stank to high hell, and I’d heard enough.

  “Did you drive over from Bricktown?” I asked, snapping like a Doberman. “It must have closed a long time ago.”

  “Yeah, at ten. But I was at home when I tried to call you guys, and I got to thinking it was important ’cause that guy kept talking about murder.”

  “You could’ve waited for morning. Do you live in Wells?”

  “Why else would I work at Bricktown?” Her hands flew to her hips. “Look, I didn’t want to come. It’s freezing out and I have to do breakfast tomorrow. That means nada tips, get it? Everyone tips for dinners, but do they tip for breakfasts? No they don’t.”

  Berg stepped in. “We appreciate you making an effort to come out here. You’ve been a big help.”

  But I’d been rude and Nicole would not be appeased. “And you should know your parking lot and building are so dark I couldn’t see where I was walking and practically tripped up the stairs. It’s dangerous out there.”

  I glanced up at the twin windows over the doors. “That shouldn’t be.” The shadows I’d seen earlier, moving over the narthex floor, had been thrown by the pole lights, and I knew there were floodlights attached to the exterior of the church.

  “Well, it be,” Nicole said. “They’re off, and the only lights are on the houses across the street, and they don’t help much.”

  Berg told her we’d check on all the lights, thanked her again, and said he’d walk her to her car.

  Nicole looked down at his cane. “That’s okay, I can do it better myself.”

  I told myself I’d been casually thoughtless like that at her age, around my early twenties, but I wanted to tell her off, tell her to grow the hell up.

  We stood at the open front doors, watching Nicole mince cautiously down the steps, as though she might tumble to her death at any moment, and head to her car, which she’d parked close to the church.

  “It’s not that dark,” I muttered.

  As she slid behind the wheel of a light-colored compact car and started the engine, I noticed the red taillights of another vehicle—a dark sedan—leaving the lot. Its driver, inept or drunk, bumped over the curb before he gunned the engine and took off.

  “Something’s wrong with her,” Berg said.

  My attention shifted back. Our messenger, visible in the dome light of her car, was staring hard at something beyond her windshield, her hands frozen midway between the steering wheel and her face.

  Berg started out the door and lumbered down the steps, me alongside him. When Nicole saw us, she got out and with a wavering hand directed our attention to a tree ten feet from her bumper. I saw nothing until Berg and I rounded a row of leafless shrubs.

  “Stay where you are, Nicole,” Berg warned.

  A man was sprawled on his back across the lawn, his arms curled inward, his legs bent as though he’d been sitting or crouching and fallen backward.

  His body was dimly lit by a solar landscaping light, and I saw now that his throat had been sliced open. His hands were covered with what I presumed was his own blood, as instinctively he’d tried to staunch the flow.

  And I knew right away who it was because I’d seen his photo on the Paranormal Society’s website.

  I turned to Berg. “That’s Weston Meyer, the psychic.”

  CHAPTER 12

  I’d called the police, and after giving the cops a few minutes alone at the scene, Berg had called the Petersons, figuring they deserved to know what had happened on their own front lawn. Now the cops were gone, as was Weston Meyer’s body. Berg and the Petersons had gone back inside, but I was standing on the threshold, holding one of the front doors open so I could study the scene from a broader perspective.

  All that remained to mark the crime was the yellow tape stretched across the church lawn, strung in a triangle around three trees. That and a few cups of blood staining the grass, which thankfully I couldn’t see from my position.

  The police had questioned Nicole, Berg, and me, but except for me seeing a car leaving the parking lot about the same time Nicole left the church, we had nothing of value to pass along. One of the cops told the Petersons they should put in new floodlights when they checked out of the Quaker Inn because the church’s dark steps and lot were a safety hazard.

  Thankfully, and weirdly, the lights had come back on in the church.

  I overheard the youngest of the four cops on the scene equate Meyer’s slaying to cattle butchering. He said he’d never seen such a brutal murder, but then, working in Wells, his experience with brutal murders must have been limited.

  I’d seen photos of murder victims my third week in the police academy, long before I’d failed the final physical ability test in week twenty-one and become one of the few PAT washouts in my class. But that was in Fort Collins, an actual city.

  Nicole, now scarred for life, had driven home on her own, mumbling fresh complaints about tomorrow’s breakfast service. The police had told Berg and me we could stay in the church since the crime scene was outside, and before they left, they’d told the Petersons the same. We were to leave the crime tape up for the time being and not trample the scene, though the detective on scene told me there wasn’t much to trample. Very little evidence, he said.

  As a light snow began to fall, I shut the door and started toward the sanctuary, where Berg was trying to calm the Petersons’ collective nerves. Drawing close to the open doorway, I heard Carissa jabbering about ghosts, which I found astonishing considering the very of-this-world cut to Meyer’s throat.

  “Talk to the police again if it will make you feel better,” Berg was saying. “They’ll tell you they’re searching for a human perpetrator.”

  I parked myself just inside the sanctuary and leaned against the back wall. My hair, limp as my body, fell across one eye, so I drew it back into a ponytail and tied it with a band I kept in my jeans pocket.

  Berg had seated the Petersons into the last pew to the right of the center aisle. Wisely, as it made the trail of red paint hard to see.

  “Can’t ghosts be violent?” Carissa said. “I’ve read they can. They toss people down stairs, they stab them, they—”

  “God doesn’t allow the souls of the dead to wreak havoc on earth,” Berg said. “Those souls are under his command now, and they don’t take on physical form, I promise you.”

  She looked away, her eyes traveling toward the narthex, the direction of escape. “Why did I ask Weston here? If I hadn’t, he’d be alive now. He warned us about the activity. He said it was beyond anything he’d ever known.” Her attention ricocheted back to Berg. “And you tell me it’s not supernatural?”

  I was struck by the depth of fear in her voice. The woman’s nerves were frayed. Before long, she would pack her bags, take her children, and leave her new home for good.

  Though Berg cared about their lives being upended, fighting evil wherever he was called to fight it was for him paramount. A sacred vocation. If the man had a motto, it w
ould be “I cede no battlefield to the enemy.”

  Berg put his be-sensible voice in gear. “The death of Weston Meyer was not supernatural, and the police will not be treating it as such. They’re going to look for his human killer, Carissa. Ghosts do not wield knives.”

  Matt rose from the pew, walked a few steps toward the narthex, then pivoted back. “I’ve never believed in ghosts, but I dreamed about my dead grandfather once, and it was incredibly real. It was nothing like all my other dreams. I thought I could reach out and touch him.”

  Berg nodded. “I believe that God may allow an extraordinary visitation, usually in a dream and usually from a loved one. So they can comfort us. Your grandfather was happy in this dream?”

  “Happier than I’d ever seen him.”

  “And you weren’t disturbed by seeing him?”

  “No, just the opposite. But the whole thing seemed like a . . . ghostly kind of experience. But it was an experience, if that makes sense.”

  “I’m not denying your experience, I’m asking you to reexamine what kind of experience it was.”

  I sat down in the last pew to the left of the aisle and rested my forearms on the pew back ahead of me, feeling tired to my bones. Forcing myself to keep my eyes open.

  “So it was just an ordinary dream?” Matt asked.

  “A good dream, sent by God,” Berg said. “An appearance that God allowed for your benefit, not a ghost as people understand ghosts. The dead do not return to earth and take form. It’s crucial you understand this.”

  A long moment passed before Carissa said, “I thought you were here to get rid of this activity, whatever you want to call it. I honestly don’t care what you call it, Mr. Bergland, I just want it gone.”

  “I know that.”

  “Madame Lebec said she senses more than one presence here, and she told us that violence imprinted itself on this place. Don’t you think tonight proves she was right?”

  Berg sat a little straighter, and in a clear, scholarly voice he said, “Human action and emotions do not leave a mark on limestone, wood, or any other material. It does not happen, and anyone who tells you it does is a charlatan.”

  “But, I mean, Ray Nickle—he said you could help us,” Carissa whimpered. “He said you were good at this kind of thing.”

  For crying out loud, she was hooked on this ghost thing as if her life depended on it.

  “I thought he gave you Teagan’s card, not mine,” Berg said.

  The man had a razor-sharp memory.

  “He did, but after I called Teagan—”

  “You talked to Ray and he mentioned my name.”

  “He said he’d heard you were good, and by that he meant good at getting rid of ghosts.”

  “When you introduced Teagan and me, Ray acted as if he didn’t know who I was. Then he admitted to having Teagan’s card but somehow he still didn’t know me. Don’t you find that strange?”

  “Maybe he’d never seen your photos,” Matt said. “Your cards don’t have photos, just names and numbers.”

  “True, true.”

  Yeah, right. That explains it.

  “We should go back to the Quaker Inn,” Matt said.

  “That’s a good idea,” Berg said. “The most important thing you can do right now is get some sleep. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

  Carissa wobbled to her feet and joined Matt in the aisle near the now-gone doors, but rather than accompany him as he started to leave, she pulled him back by his coat sleeve. “Wait, Matt. Mr. Bergland, what’s going on here? If it’s not ghosts, what is it?”

  “Evil,” Berg said simply.

  Unbelievably, Matt laughed.

  After decades of battling dark forces, Berg was used to that kind of reaction, but it frosted me.

  I stood. “What exactly did Ray Nickle say I do for a living?”

  “I told you,” Carissa replied. “He said you were a ghost hunter but I wasn’t to call you that to your face because you were so much more and less. Whatever that means.”

  “We’ll talk tomorrow,” Berg said again, verbally shooing them along. Lord help us if they saw the red paint. “You’ll get your house back, one way or another. Get some sleep.”

  Carissa turned robotically toward him. “I don’t think I can sleep here ever again.”

  I could almost smell the fear on her, like a heavy perfume. And Matt was more frightened than he wanted to let on. That was what the laughter was about, I realized. It was the only way he knew how to cope.

  We walked the Petersons to the front door and locked it behind them, useless a gesture as that was.

  “Let’s check the basement, see if there’s anything we can use to tie the doors shut,” I said.

  Berg waited on the landing while I headed down the basement stairs, aimed my flashlight at the shelving along one wall, and searched for ropes, extension cords, anything. I quickly found several sets of chains and a number of padlocks and keys.

  “Eureka!” I gathered them up—together they were remarkably heavy—and hauled them up the stairs.

  “Chains and locks,” Berg said flatly.

  “Schools use them, so why not a church?”

  We went from door to door, Berg holding the locks and chains, me stringing them up. At the same time I checked my front-door key in each of the locks and discovered that my single key worked with all of them. I’d been afraid of that. An intruder with an old key could get in any of the doors.

  The front doors were easy. I tied the two bar handles with one chain, then looped in a padlock. The other doors, being single rather than double, were more difficult, but by shackling first the handles and then fastening the chains to anything I could find near the doors—in one instance the handle of a fire-extinguisher cabinet—I managed to secure them. The handle on the cabinet would give way under force, of course, but at least we’d hear someone trying to break in.

  “That takes care of the humans,” I said, turning the key on the final padlock. “I need a Diet Coke and you need to take a nap.”

  “A short one, yes.”

  He followed me to the kitchen and sat while I got a Coke from the fridge and examined the tuna salad Matt had made. It didn’t appeal to me, but figuring Berg might want a sandwich, I turned back to ask him. He was sitting with his head down, massaging his temples, looking not physically tired so much as world weary.

  “So what aren’t you telling me about this case?” I asked, plopping down on a chair, popping open the Coke can.

  He dropped his hands. “What would you say we know so far?”

  “Throwing it back on me, are you? All right. We know that Edward Lloyd became a priest here about three years ago. Things were going well financially. Then, about six months into his pastorship, or whatever you call it in Episcopal land, things went downhill fast. Donations, which were already slowing, dropped like a rock, and membership fell by a third.”

  “A very important point.”

  “I need to read more in that binder, by the way. I only skimmed it. But that hidden ledger page looks like someone was keeping a record of stolen donations.”

  “A trophy. Thieves like to look back on how much they looted.”

  I continued with my summation. “So six months after the financial downturn, Lloyd disappeared and was never heard from again. As a result, the church rumor mill started, including the bizarre rumor you mentioned about him joining a cult.”

  “And sneaking into the church at night.”

  “No so preposterous now, is it? So the church was forced to sell the building. The Petersons bought it a month ago and immediately began to experience unusual sounds and smells.”

  “Don’t forget Carissa said objects moved.”

  “Very suspicious. And the day after closing, Carissa asked Weston Meyer to do a psychic cleansing. He told them there’s a lot of activity here and suggested they call Madame Lebec. A couple of con artists if ever there were con artists. Then yesterday morning, a contractor opened up a wall in the basement and di
scovered Lloyd’s body, and today we found out he was murdered a month ago, about the time the Petersons moved in.” I took a sip of my Coke.

  “Anything else?”

  “Weston Meyer was on the church grounds for some unknown reason. At night. I could tell by looking at his blood that he’d been killed very recently.”

  “And?”

  I considered. “Lebec knew the man in the wall was Lloyd. Knew, not suspected.”

  “Correct.”

  “Lebec says this church has a reputation for being a dangerous place.”

  “Folklorically haunted,” Berg said. “That little volume, A History of St. Michael’s in Wells, tells of hauntings going back to its construction, when a worker died.”

  “I’ll check it out. We don’t know who wrote that note about Jack or who wrote his name in paint in the sanctuary—and by the way, we forgot to tell the police about the paint.”

  “It can wait.”

  “We also need to find out about the Nickles’ dog.”

  “Correct.”

  “And one more thing. Ray Nickle is really out to get you.”

  “Correct.”

  “But Nickle . . .” I sat forward. “Lebec is a piker compared to him. I think Ray Nickle is deeply evil.”

  He nodded slowly. “Also correct.”

  CHAPTER 13

  The morning dawned cold and foggy. In need of a warm breakfast, Berg and I decided to head to Bricktown Burgers. We hoped to speak with disgruntled breakfast-service waitress Nicole again, too. Another reason to go. Aside from pancakes.

  After the shock of Weston Meyer’s murder, Berg and I had taken turns napping and reading in the sanctuary—me the binder, Berg the history of the church. But those few hours before light were uneventful. The foul odor had never reappeared, even in the office, and the church lights had stayed on.

  Berg left a note for the Petersons, I unchained the front doors, and we stepped out into a white world: snow dusting the ground like powdered sugar, frosted trees and roofs. I set the windshield wipers going until they cut through a thin layer of slushy ice, then swung the Explorer out of the parking lot and down Oliver Street for Bricktown.