Time for some tough love. “Sure I have. I struggled with why you, my best friend, would have an affair with my girlfriend and then have the nerve to show up at my house asking for help. And even now, I struggle with my own reasoning as to why I don’t choke the hell out of you and toss you out on your ass.”
His eyes grew big, but he didn’t apologize and didn’t flinch at the mention of Sara. “You seem to have moved on well enough,” he said flatly as he sipped his coffee. “Such an inspiration, Midas. I’ll call Pam and see if I can hang out in her driveway until she gets back. I can see I’m wearing out my welcome here.”
The alarm on my phone reminded me I had somewhere I had to be. Somewhere I’d rather be. Hopefully he wouldn’t rob me blind while I was gone. “I think that’s a good idea, Peter. I’d like you gone in the morning.”
He hadn’t expected that. “Hey, where you going? An investigation? Need some help?” His mood changed again as he got up from the couch and began digging through his worn backpack.
I reached for my laptop and my gym bag. “I’m going out to meet my team. Yes to the first question, no to the second.”
“Come on! Hey, I was the best investigator you had, Midas. How many investigations have we done together? Remember the train station? Wow! That one was a doozy, wasn’t it?” He rubbed his hands through his short black hair and his beard. His red eyes told me how badly he hurt, but I couldn’t help him. I wouldn’t. Not this time. I didn’t need a drunk on the job with me.
“You were the best, Pete, but you left my team, remember? Later, dude. Try not to burn the place down while I’m gone.” I walked out of the house, slamming the door behind me. As I sat in my black SUV, I shook my head at my own stupidity. Pete was never going to get it. He sucked as a friend, but worse than that, he sucked as a human being. This wasn’t the guy I knew, the guy who was curious about the paranormal and willing to do whatever it took to get to the truth. This one was pitiful, blaming everyone else for his current situation. Yeah, I would be glad when he was gone. For some reason, my garage door remote wasn’t working. I had to get out, hit the button on the wall and wait for the door to go up. I drove the car out and reached inside to have the door close behind me. I’ll have to get that fixed. What a pain in the ass!
As I drove to Cassidy’s, I thought about things, particularly what my life would be like if I were still with Sara Springfield. I wouldn’t be driving down any Mobile street, that was for sure. I would be in California, no doubt—Hollywood. As Sara’s right-hand man, I would be at her beck and call night and day. She liked that, having me at her beck and call.
No, I was finally free of Sara. Cassidy—sweet, slightly wild Cassidy—was my future. She had an artist’s heart and a can-do attitude. Who knew I would fall so quickly after my breakup? I told myself that what I had with Cassidy wasn’t a rebound relationship. What I had with her was real.
I smiled thinking about the last time we made love. But my reverie was interrupted by a bad driver. “Hey!” I screamed at the guy who just rear-ended me. I waved furiously in the rearview mirror. It felt like the jerk tagged my bumper with his crappy van. “What the hell?” I pulled the car over to the side of the road and got out to examine the damage. As I did, so did he. No, wait. That was no guy but a large lady wearing a muumuu and a brightly colored turban.
She got out of her very old Dodge Caravan and began to apologize immediately. “Oh, I’m so sorry! I was looking at the man and wasn’t paying attention like I should.” She pointed at the top of my SUV, but I didn’t see anything.
“What man? What are you talking about?”
This woman might be drunk, or at the very least confused.
“The guy on the top of your SUV. That’s illegal, you know. You aren’t supposed to drive around with people on the roof of your car. He must be lying down up there because I saw him very clearly, sir.”
“There is nobody up there, ma’am. Are you sure you saw someone on my vehicle?” I tried to take her seriously, but this was kind of ridiculous. At least she hadn’t really done any damage to the SUV.
“Really?” she said with an eyebrow raised sky high. She tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to the SUV. Sure enough, she was right. That was Peter Broadus climbing off the top of the vehicle toting his worn backpack.
He half waved at us with an embarrassed grin, and I said, “Excuse me.”
“No problem. I told you I saw someone,” she shouted behind me.
I was furious. No, livid. “What the hell were you doing, Broadus? Trying to get yourself killed?”
“You have to take me along. I need this, Midas. Give me a break here.” He shuffled his feet on the side of the road, standing next to the passenger door. I wanted to slap him or shove him down the hill, but cars were whizzing by and the woman was still watching me. And I really wanted to get out of there before the police arrived.
Shaking my head angrily, I relented. “Whatever. I guess if you’re willing to die to investigate, I might as well take you along.” The lady waited for me to return, but I waved at her and hopped in the truck. It didn’t seem worth it to file an accident report. She hadn’t done much damage…it was nothing I couldn’t fix myself. As we drove off, Peter was grinning from ear to ear as if he’d pulled off some complicated bank heist. I rolled my eyes and said, “You’re an idiot. You know that, right?”
“I won’t ask you to tell me what the story is. I can wait…I know from experience that you hate repeating yourself. But give me a clue—is it a residual haunt we’re looking at? Or something more sinister, like an inhuman entity?”
I shot him a look but didn’t answer him. Peter appeared genuinely excited about getting back into the field. I didn’t encourage him. Mostly because I didn’t trust him. And so far, he hadn’t apologized for leaving the team without notice, for taking some of my equipment when he left, and what was the other thing? Oh, yeah—for sleeping with Sara!
“Man, this would be my first inhuman. I’ve always wanted to investigate one. You know that, Midas. So is it?” He grinned, and his shock of black spiked hair shone under the passing streetlights.
I pulled the SUV into the empty spot in front of Cassidy’s apartment building. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t pretend that everything was okay. If we were going to work together again, even for the night, there would have to be some ground rules. If not, I would kill him. Dead.
“Hands off Cassidy. That’s not negotiable, Peter. Second, don’t you dare steal so much as a battery from me ever again. Lastly, I don’t want to hear about Sara, and I sure as hell don’t want her knowing a thing about me. What you two do is between you. I don’t want to know what she is doing, where she is going or anything else. You got that? Capiche?”
“Capiche? What are we? Mobsters now? Should I be afraid of the Greek mob?” Pete laughed.
“I want you to say that you agree. Do it, or get out, Peter.”
He stopped laughing and looked me square in the eye. “Fine. I agree, to all of it. But one day, you and I will have to talk.”
“One day,” I said as I climbed out of the SUV. Yeah. One day, we’d have to have a real talk.
Chapter Four—Cassidy
Nobody spoke for a while, and I couldn’t help but notice Sierra tossing dirty looks in Peter Broadus’ direction. Wisely, she didn’t confront him; given her recent confession, doing so might have cast her in a bit of a hypocritical light. I smiled at her cautiously, hoping to encourage peace. She winked back, kept quiet and hunkered down in her favorite spot on my couch. Joshua plopped down beside her while Peter sat in an out-of-the-way place. Midas brooded as he poured himself a glass of soda in the kitchen.
“Hitting the hard stuff tonight, huh?” I kidded him as I nudged him with my elbow. “And what happened to having the meeting here because Pete was at your place? I didn’t think you’d bring him with you.”
Midas sighed and took a swig. “He hitched a ride. I didn’t invite him, but I’ll deal with him later.”
; “You have a good heart, Midas Demopolis,” I whispered in his ear. The doorbell rang, and I scurried away to welcome our guest of honor into my home. “Hello, Helen. No Bruce tonight?”
“Not on this one. He has family obligations.”
Before I could respond, Pete was in her arms, and she immediately hugged him up like he was the best thing since sandwich bread, as she liked to say. He appeared genuinely happy about seeing her. I wondered about their backstory…had they all been one big happy family before the Sara/Pete/Midas triangle?
What did I know? Maybe Sara seduced him.
Whatever the reason, I couldn’t see why anyone would choose Pete over Midas. My boyfriend was as honest as the day was long and didn’t have a mysterious bone in his body. Pete, on the other hand…let’s just say he didn’t like letting anyone close. Or at least that was the impression I had of him. So why cheat on Midas?
I closed the door behind them and followed them into my living room. Without meaning to, I kept staring at the floor and thinking about those weird wet footprints. I brought out bottles of water and offered iced soda, but nobody besides Midas wanted anything. I found it odd that he forgot to bring the promised food. I had been looking forward to something from Demeter’s.
“Well, let’s get started.” Midas clapped his hands together and took a seat in one of my dining room chairs that he brought into the living room. “Helen, tell us why you would like us to investigate Dixie House, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure! Well, it has to do with the ghost, naturally. We’ve been doing some renovations, my family and I, and we believe that might be what’s triggered the activity. For those of you who don’t know, the Dixie House Bed and Breakfast has been in my family for almost fifty years, but the history is much older than that. Some believe that Dixie House was named after my late cousin, but that’s not right. It was called that long before she and her husband purchased it.”
Mesmerized by Helen’s storytelling—she had a natural talent for it—Sierra stopped chewing on her pencil eraser and asked, “Did you know that it used to be a speakeasy, Helen? The Tingles built the original building, but they sold it to someone named Don Myrick not long after it was built. By the time Prohibition hit the country, it was the place to be. Wild parties, jazz bands and a love triangle gone wrong. Those are some of the stories I’ve uncovered.” Joshua frowned at her, but I didn’t think Sierra noticed. She was completely engrossed in this story. “There was a murder at Dixie House on March 4, 1922, but for the life of me I haven’t been able to uncover the details. It was a big scandal, and they closed the place for about ten years.”
Helen’s sad, beautiful expression told a story, but I wasn’t sure what it was. Not yet. I would like to paint her one day, I thought, but not as a ghost. She said softly, “My cousin, such a lovely, intelligent woman, she knew all about those old stories. She used to have some scrapbooks that she liked to show the guests. I have one with me. Some of these are very interesting. I can read you some if you like.”
“Sure, that would be great, Helen,” Midas said.
“Here’s one from July 3, 1983: ‘Woke up to find wet footprints on the floor of my room. No one around.’ Here’s another: ‘My wife and I heard jazz music playing all night. Couldn’t sleep. Thought we smelled tobacco smoke a few times.’ Here’s one I can relate to: ‘Heard a woman giggling by the pool, but there was no one there.’ The list of events is extensive.” She put the book on the coffee table, and Sierra immediately picked it up and began flipping through the pages. “The worst of the activity, the real heavy stuff, happens in the basement. It was definitely a speakeasy; when I was growing up, they used to refer to places like Dixie House as a ‘blind pig.’ Isn’t that a hoot? Don’t you know the booze was flowing back in the twenties! We southerners were never good with that whole Prohibition thing,” she said with a chuckle and tossed her neat hair behind her. Helen had surely heard her share of stories growing up.
“What about the most recent history, the story about the boy, Darren Carpenter?” Sierra asked in her husky voice. “Did they ever find him? I couldn’t find much about him.”
“Who?” Peter asked.
“Darren was Erma Pettaway’s great-nephew,” Helen answered. “She was the head housekeeper when Dixie ran the place. Darren disappeared from the house one day. Nothing was ever found of the boy. He disappeared without a trace, and poor Erma died of a heart attack not a year later. That was the only time I ever remember seeing the missing boy’s father. He had a funny name.” She clicked her fingers and bit her lip as she tried to recall it.
“Cash, Cash Carpenter,” Sierra volunteered as she set the scrapbook down.
“Such a sad young man. To have lost his aunt and his son in the same year…hard pill to swallow. Cash never came back to Mobile after that. Not as far as anyone heard, anyhow. That reminds me, I have something I want you to see. Peter, do me a favor? Go down to my van and bring that painting up, please? I’m afraid it’s too heavy for an old lady to carry. In fact, you might need an extra pair of hands yourself.”
“You’re hardly an old lady,” he said, smiling at her. Midas didn’t offer to help him, so Joshua did.
We watched them leave with Helen’s keys, and I asked her, “What happened to Darren exactly? I feel like I’m behind here.” I had a soft spot for cases that involved children. I thought about Kylie and shivered remembering the last time I heard her voice. It had been right here in this apartment. Her ghostly voice had whispered, “Goodbye, Cassidy.” I swallowed hard to keep the tears at bay.
“Oh, I never knew the child, never saw him, but my cousin loved Erma. In fact, when people began to accuse her of killing the boy and hiding his body, Dixie hired an attorney for Erma in case the police took their investigation in that direction. They never did, not officially, and Dixie never believed any of that. She’d say to me, ‘Helen, if Erma killed her great-nephew, I’m the pope.’”
“She seemed pretty sure of Erma’s innocence. What about the boy’s mother? Was she in the picture at all? Someone else? Maybe a boyfriend? Were the parents divorced then?” Sierra asked as Midas continued to quietly brood.
Helen pulled a piece of hard candy out of her purse and carefully unwrapped it. She appeared deep in thought. “No mother. She left him with Cash and took off. I got the impression she got involved with some shady characters and had to leave, but I didn’t really know the Carpenters. Just Miss Erma. Such a sweet lady. I hate that she died not knowing where Darren ended up. Can’t remember his mother’s name, but I’m sure we could find it in the records.”
Midas finally spoke up, “What are you experiencing at Dixie House, Helen? What have you seen?”
She squinted at him. “My daughter saw a ghost—in the pool, no less. That’s the last place anyone saw Darren Carpenter—swimming in that pool. You see, my cousin Dixie had invited Erma to have the boy’s birthday party at the house, just as a kind of fun thing. It had a pool and plenty of room, and it is a lovely place to have any kind of event like that. So, the ghost might be the boy, or it might be someone else. I don’t know.”
“So, like a full-body apparition of Darren Carpenter? Swimming? Floating?”
“Oh no, not like that. The waters were stirred up, like someone was splashing around in them violently, but she couldn’t see anyone. That’s been seen by more than one person. And the footprints, the wet footprints. People see those all the time.”
“Interesting,” I said.
“At the pool, I’ve recorded weird splashing. That’s disturbing in itself, but the basement has a very different feel to it. It’s oppressive. You always get the feeling that you’re intruding, that you don’t belong. It’s very negative. It’s worse since they’ve been working down there. And then upstairs, at the end of the hall, sometimes I walk up and there’s a horrible clamminess hovering in the air. I can’t describe it better than that.”
Peter and Joshua returned with the painting. Helen had it covered with a dusty sheet. I had to
ask, “Is this a painting of Erma? Could she be haunting Dixie House?”
Helen smiled cautiously. “Let me tell you about this painting. It was painted by a mystic named Noelle. He lived in Holland, and I remember how proud my cousin was that she’d gotten onto his clientele list. During the 1970s, commissioning expensive pieces of art was the thing to do, at least in Mobile’s posh elite community. And Dixie was one to keep up with the Joneses. This painting arrived the day Darren Carpenter disappeared, but nobody looked at it until almost a year later. Noelle never met my cousin and knew nothing about her except that she was a customer from Alabama. He never came to the Dixie House Bed and Breakfast, either before or after. The police didn’t believe that he’d be involved in such a complicated conspiracy, and for what? To demand a ransom from a housekeeper? So, you see, it is all so mysterious. So darn mysterious. But no, I don’t believe Erma is haunting the place. And if she is, I don’t think she would harm any of us.”
I smiled at her. “Okay, now you have my interest piqued big time. I’ve never heard of this Noelle, and I have to see the painting.”
With a sad expression, Helen asked, “Do you have an easel we might borrow?”
“Oh yes, sorry. I’ll get you one.” I came back with my sturdiest easel and set it up in two clicks. With the help of Peter and Joshua, Helen placed the painting on the easel and removed the dusty covering. I immediately flopped on the couch. Only Sierra spoke.
“That’s disturbing.”
This Noelle, whoever he was, painted visions, just like I did. The way the picture displayed the boy’s fearful brown eyes, the shadowy hand over his mouth, the splashing of the water in the background. Even more startling were the wet footprints, barely discernible but certainly there, as if the boy had been trapped inside the painting and had put his wet foot on the canvas hoping to push his way out.
And that’s when it hit me. Darren Carpenter had been here in my loft earlier. Those were his wet footprints I had seen.
Haunted on the Gulf Coast (Gulf Coast Paranormal Trilogy Book 2) Page 13