Medium Things (A Lost Souls Lane Mystery Book 3)

by Erin Huss

  “Not worth much,” Mike says. “But we have to get back to work.” He starts to lower the door when Handhoff sticks his foot in the way.

  “I thought you had to get your mom’s stuff,” he spits out the words.

  Um … I reach in and grab a small cross-stitched pillow. “Here it is!”

  Mike blinks. “Dude, right, yeah, that’s it. Glad we found it.”

  Handhoff shoves a cigarette into the corner of his mouth and lights the end using a long butane lighter. He takes a drag then spins the lighter around his finger like it’s a pistol and shoves it into his back pocket. Mike hurries to close and lock the rolling door.

  “Bye, Dad,” he says and puts a hand on my lower back, urging me to move. Before I know it, we’re outside.

  I put my purse in the trunk, not wanting to risk Mike finding out I stole his godmother’s journals, and get in the car.

  “Care to share what that was all about?” I press start and pull my seatbelt on.

  “That’s my dad,” he says with a forced smile.

  “I gathered as much.”

  “He lives onsite in an apartment attached to the office.”

  I peel out of the parking lot, eager to put some distance between Handhoff and my car.

  “Why’d you tell him we were there to get your mother’s things?”

  Mike tosses the cross-stitched pillow into my backseat. “My dad and Margo didn’t get along. That’s all.”

  “And he wouldn’t want you storing her stuff?”

  “It’s complicated family drama. Not worth getting into.”

  “Maybe, but I just saved your life. You owe me a little more explanation.”

  “I doubt the light fixture would have killed me.”

  “Fine. I saved you from breaking a bone or getting a concussion. Ether way, it would have been a pricey doctor’s bill. Spill.”

  Mike heaves a sigh. “Margo fought for custody after my mom died and she won.”

  “Was your dad trying to get you back when Margo died?”

  Mike turns in his seat to face me. “I really don’t want to get into it.” I catch a feeling of humiliation from Mike. It’s the first negative feeling he’s had all day, and I decide to stop prying.

  But if I can’t get the information I need from Mike, then I’ll have to find it on my own. Which means ditching him, ASAP.

  “Since it’s almost quitting time,” I say, “I think I’ll drop you off at The Gazette, and we can resume the article tomorrow.”

  “But there’s plenty of working hours left in the day.”

  I feel like saying, yes, I know! That’s why I need you to leave me alone so I can solve a murder! But of course I can’t say that, so I say, “Ummm …” for lack of a better idea.

  “We could bang out the article tonight, send the pictures over, and be done.”

  “It’s just … I need to be home for dinner. My parents are big on family meals. You know how that goes,” I say with instant regret. I mentally slap myself on the forehead. What an insensitive thing to say. Mike doesn’t know what it’s like to have family dinners. His mom was killed in a car crash, his godmother was murdered, and his father swallows goldfish. I’d venture to say there weren’t many happy family meals in his life.

  I stop at the light and turn my head, ready to apologize, but Mike is back to his happy-go-lucky self and smiles at me. “Sounds good. What are we having?”

  Um …

  Here’s the thing, I’ve never brought a living person home before. So when Mike and I walk in the door, my parents aren’t quite sure what to do with themselves. They’re sitting at the kitchen table. Dad with a cup of hot chocolate. Mom is on her laptop with store-bought dye smeared on her roots, and they’re both staring at us with their mouths open.

  “I brought a coworker home,” I say.

  Mike waves. “Hello.”

  My parents continue to gawk for an uncomfortable amount of time. Each blinks twice as if to make sure they’re not dreaming then springs into action. Mom hurries to the kitchen and starts rummaging through cabinets. “Mike, are you hungry? Do you have food allergies?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Dad drags Mike to the table by the hand. “Do you follow baseball?”

  “Are you okay with gluten, Mike?” Mom hollers from the kitchen. “Or I can make rice. Where is the rice, John?”

  “I’m fine with gluten,” Mike says.

  Dad gets up from the table. “We had a case in the garage.”

  “I’m really fine with whatever,” Mike tries again.

  “… but that’s been there for months,” Mom is saying. “Go to the store, John. See if they have fresh salmon.”

  Dad grabs a notepad from the fridge and starts writing. “Rice and salmon … But I’m allergic to fish.”

  “It’s really fine,” Mike says, not that my parents are listening.

  “You’re right. Let’s do a borscht instead.”

  “What the hell is a borscht?” Drew asks. He’s been so quiet I almost forgot he was here. “And when are we going to start looking for my hat?”

  “Soon,” I say under my breath then clear my throat loud enough to grab my parents’ attention. Mom’s brown eyes meet mine, and I point to her head.

  A hand flies to her mouth, and her cheeks go red. “Oh, goodness me.” She leans over the sink and starts rinsing the dye while spouting off ingredients for my dad to pick up at the store. Things like marjoram and cardamom, spices I’ve never seen my mother touch in the twenty-three years I’ve known her.

  Jabba, my cat, walks across the table, and Mike reaches out to pet him. “He’s not friendly,” I warn before Jabba bites his hand off.

  Jabba shoots me a look as if to say who you calling unfriendly? He leaps onto Mike’s lap and curls into a ball.

  “He seems nice to me,” Mike says, scratching under Jabba’s chin. “What’s your name little fella?”

  “It’s Jabba.”

  “Jabba?”

  “As in Jabba the Hut,” I say.

  “I can see the resemblance.”

  Mom drops a pan in the kitchen, and we all jump. “Really, guys,” I say. “We have a deadline, and we don’t have time for an elaborate meal. What about mac and cheese?”

  My mom looks appalled at the very notion, and I don’t know why. We’ve had boxed mac and cheese the last four nights. Yesterday, my mom even put tuna in there for extra protein.

  For the record, tuna in mac and cheese is pretty good.

  We’ve been pinching pennies the last two weeks. After my mom's threat to Sheriff Vance, my parents haven’t had any new listings, and the listings they did have went off the market after the sellers pulled out. Even their listing in Trucker, which is in a different county, decided to no longer sell. We’re not destitute, but there’s not a lot of money in reserve. This is Fernn Valley—real estate isn’t exactly booming and never has been.

  Which begs the question, where did Margo get all that money? She couldn’t have been making that much as a Fernn Valley real estate agent.

  Drew puts his mouth up to my ear. “When are we gonna start looking for my hat?”

  “I’ll be right back,” I say, not that anyone is paying attention to me. My dad and Mike are now talking baseball, and I hear my mom mention grilled cheese. Not sure how we went from borscht to cheese sandwiches, but whatever. Dinner is the least of my concerns.

  My room is down the hall and to the right. The walls are pink, the curtains are lace, I have a daybed, and a porcelain doll collection. It screams little girl room, which is great, except I’m twenty-three. I have plans to move someday. So redecorating would be a waste of money. Plus I don’t have money, so there’s that.

  “My hat's not in here,” Drew says, looking around.

  “Yes, I know. I came in here to talk privately. When we were at the storage place, I found Margo’s bank statements from the month before she died. She had a lot of money coming in, and then she transferred it to a different account. It doesn�
��t make any sense. There aren’t that many homes here to sell, and the ones that do sell aren’t that expensive. My parents make anywhere from six to eight grand on a sale now a days. In two thousand and three, it would have been less. Why did she have so much money?”

  “Do you want me to answer? Or was that a hypothetical question?”

  “I want you to care a little more about overturning your conviction.”

  “I came to you for help finding a hat. You’re the one who wanted to solve a murder. I didn’t know that was even possibility!”

  I open my mouth, about to retort, when I realize he’s right.

  All he’s talked about sine he arrived was his hat. I’m the one who started the murder investigation. I only did so because of my interaction with Margo. But I told Drew what Margo said, like she had asked, and she isn’t here. Drew is. Maybe that’s all I was supposed to do.

  Not that I can let a murder go unsolved. I suppose I could find Drew’s hat and finish this investigation without him.

  “Drew, if you want, I can drop the murder and only look for your hat,” I say.

  He thrusts his hands through his hair and turns to face the wall.

  “Do you want me to drop this?” I ask again.

  When Drew turns around, there’s a pained look on his face, as if he’s engaged in an internal battle. “I feel like … like …” He narrows his eyes. “Like someone got away with homicide and that person must pay!”

  Good. Now we’re on the same page. “Tell me what you now about Handhoff and Margo. Did he talk about her?”

  “I know the court said he could see the kid so long as he passed a drug test.”

  “And he didn’t pass?”

  “What do you think?”

  I think that would be a big no. “Did Handhoff have an attorney? File paperwork? Try to fight the ruling?” I ask, trying to understand. A custody battle seems like a motive for murder.

  “I think Handhoff was mad Margo took the kid, not that she had his kid,” he says.

  “Huh?”

  “You don’t touch Stephen Handhoff’s stuff and get away with it.”

  Oh, got it. “Handhoff was less concerned about parenting Mike. He was more upset Margo was calling the shots.”

  “That was my impression, but I was mostly high when we hung out.” Drew sits on the floor and plays with his shoelaces.

  Great. He’s not going to be of much help with this theory. Not if he was on drugs during most of their interactions. I should reach out to Linney, Margo’s sister, again. Earlier today, before Drew showed up and before I even knew who Stephen Handhoff was, I’d called Linney. All we talked about was Margo and the book she’d requested from the library.

  Me: “My name is Zoe Lane, and I live in Fernn Valley … I’m calling because I have this book from the library ... and ... um ... your sister ordered it when she lived here.”

  Linney: “That’s nice.”

  Me: “She ordered it right before she passed away.”

  Linney: “She didn’t pass away. She was murdered!”

  Me: “Right. Yes. She was, and I’m sorry. Um ... the book is for ... mediums.”

  Linney: “Sounds like Margo. She was interested in ghosts and paranormal stuff right before she died … You know what’s funny? This morning, when I was lying in bed, I had the strangest feeling that I was going to get a call from someone in Fernn Valley regarding Margo. It was almost like Margo told me so herself. Which is just silly.”

  Not silly at all. It was at that moment I realized the reason Margo wanted me to trace the book back to her was so I’d know she too was a medium.

  I then went on to ask Linney if Margo ever mentioned Sheriff Vance, to which she replied, “He’s the one who helped put away the guy that killed her.” And that was the end of our conversation.

  Had I known Drew was about to show up, I would have waited to call her. I have a lot more questions now. For example, did Stephen Handhoff ever threaten Margo? Was he ever looked at as a suspect? Did she know Margo had two tickets to San Diego? Who drove a Mercedes?

  I could talk to Mike, but I don’t know how to go about asking him in a casual, non-invasive, just-trying-to-start-conversation-not-trying-to-exonerate-your-godmother’s-murderer kind of way. My people skills aren’t that advanced, and he went on the defense when I asked about the Mercedes.

  “There’s also Sheriff Vance,” I say. “He could possibly be involved.”

  Drew looks up at me. “What’s he got to do with anything, aside from the fact he’s the one who arrested me?”

  “He’s hiding something. And whenever I am around him, he has this haunting image of a child with brown eyes.”

  “You have brown eyes.”

  This is true. But, “I don’t think it’s me.” The kid is about six or seven years old, and I had most of my run-ins with the law at the age of three.

  “I have brown eyes. Handhoff’s kid has brown eyes. So does your mom. My sister has brown eyes. Your dad has brown eyes. My niece has brown eyes. Sheriff Vance has brown eyes …”

  “Okay, I got it. There are a lot of people with brown eyes. But this memory haunts Sheriff Vance whenever I’m around.”

  Drew rises to his feet. “Zoe Lane, can you read minds?”

  “I can see other people’s thoughts as they pertain to their current feelings.”

  “So that’s a no?”

  “It’s a sort of.” I check over my shoulder to make sure we’re still alone. Jabba is standing in the doorway staring at Drew.

  “That’s the ugliest cat I’ve ever seen,” Drew says. “Where’d you get it, by a nuclear factory?”

  Jabba hisses.

  Drew hides behind me. “Can that thing see me?”

  “Possibly. I have this theory Jabba is the reincarnated spirit of the first ghost who visited me when I was three years old. His name was Jose, and he was falsely accused of murder and died on death row. I accidentally burned down my house trying to make him bacon.”

  “He was on death row?” Drew steps out from behind me. “Damn, man. Respect.”

  Jabba runs under my bed, and I close the door. “Let’s get back to Handhoff. Do you think he killed Margo?”

  “What about my hat?”

  “We’ll look for it tomorrow. Tonight, we need to gather more information about Handhoff and Margo’s relationship.” There’s a knock on my door, and I slap a hand over my mouth. I’m talking way too loud.

  “Zoe are you in there?” It’s Mike.

  “Um … sure.”

  He opens the door and steps inside. “So this is your room?”

  I want to lie and tell him no, it belongs to my little sister. But this is Fernn Valley, where everyone knows everything about everyone, and he knows there is no sister.

  Mike has a look around. “Nice doll collection.”

  “Um … thanks.” My legs feel like they’re made of goo, and my heart is beating in my ears. Not because I have feelings for Mike, and not because I have a stash of hot romance novels under my bed, but because I’ve never had a living person inside my bedroom before. Well, aside from my parents.

  Drew presses his mouth to my ear. “There’s a fan in the master room. Turn it on for me.”

  Ugh.

  Mike picks up a doll dressed as a clown. “These don’t give you the creeps?”

  Nope. I’ve had way creepier things in my room. But instead I say, “Not really.”

  “Your parents are nice,” he says.

  “They seem to really like you.”

  “I have that effect on parentals.”

  Jabba emerges from under the bed and rubs against Mike’s leg, purring. Very un-Jabba like. Mike leans down and picks him up. I’ve never seen Jabba let anyone pick him up. Me included.

  “You seem to have that effect on cats, too. Jabba doesn’t typically like being touched by anyone.”

  “I like animals,” he says. “Oh, I know what I wanted to ask you. I was curious about your next-door neighbors.”

&nbs
p; “What about them?”

  “Are they … hot?”

  I roll my eyes.

  “Do they pounce?”

  My cheeks go red.

  “What about their loins? Do they … burn?”

  I snatch a pillow from my bed and toss it at Mike to get him to stop. He ducks out the way.

  “Zoe!” Drew is jumping up and down. “The fan.”

  “Fine,” I accidentally say out loud. Oops.

  Mike furrows his brow. “Fine what?”

  “Um … fine … fine. Errr … I just need to um … change. Yeah. I need to change my clothes,” I say, as if it’s the most brilliant idea I’ve ever had. I really need to take some sort of socializing for beginner’s class.

  Mike cocks his thumb towards the door. “I’ll go see if your mom needs help.”

  Drew steps out of the way, allowing Mike to pass. “I don’t like people walking through me,” he says.

  I don’t blame him. That has to be weird. Almost as weird as this entire day. It started with taking pictures of squirrels, and now I have a living man in my house.

  Once I can hear Mike’s footsteps down the hall, I open my closet, feeling a bit unsteady.

  “I thought we were going to the fan,” Drew whines.

  “Give me a second. I have to change now that I told Mike I was.” I grab jeans, a blue shirt, and a pink sweater with elbow patches. Then turn to Drew. “A little privacy, please.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can change my clothes.”

  Drew shakes his head. “Don’t worry. I won’t look. You’re not my type.”

  “Oh, are you gay?”

  “No, you’re just not my type. I like girls with a figure.”

  “Get out.”

  Drew walks through the wall, and I slip out of my clothes. I have a figure. I mean, it’s not curvy like Va-ness-a, Brian’s girlfriend, but it’s … whatever. It doesn’t matter what Drew thinks. All that matters is that I get Mike out of here fast so I can call Linney.

  I find Drew waiting for me in my parents’ room, lying on their bed and staring up at the ceiling. “What’s with the fan anyway?”

  “Gives me the same feeling as a good joint.”

  “Fans make you high?”

  “Just flip it on.”

  “Well, now I don’t want to.”