The Ghoul Next Door

by Victoria Laurie

  “Yes,” he said with a chuckle. “You’ve heard of me?”

  I shook my head, but I knew he’d already caught the hint of recognition. “You didn’t by any chance used to live in a house on Stoughton Street, did you?”

  Lester’s brow furrowed and his eyes became guarded. “That’s my rental,” he said. “It belonged to my brother; then it fell to me.”

  “Oh,” I said, trying to invent a cover for myself. “I used to live on Stoughton Street and you looked familiar. I was Brad Rowe’s girlfriend for a while.”

  “Well, I used to putter around that place when tenants moved out. That was before I started driving wheelchairs,” Lester said, his smile still intact.

  “What happened?” I asked before I realized that might be a little nosy.

  “Cancer,” he said. “Spread to my legs a year ago. Now it’s in my back.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” I told him. I’d had no idea he was so feeble.

  Lester waved a hand as if it were no big deal. “What’re you gonna do?” he said with a shrug.

  I nodded and tried to offer him an encouraging smile. It felt tight and not very genuine. I didn’t know where else to go with our conversation.

  As it happened, I didn’t have to. Lester lifted his chin again and said, “Ah, here comes my buddy. He manages the house now. Maybe you’ve seen him around too.”

  I stiffened, knowing that Raymond Eades was approaching. Thinking quickly, I pulled my cell from my back pocket and said, “Oh, I’m so sorry, but this is a call I have to take.” I then put the phone to my ear and pretended to start a conversation while turning away from Lester and keeping my back to Raymond. I had no idea if he’d recognize me, but I decided not to risk it.

  Carefully I navigated the room, always keeping Lester and Raymond at my back, and made it safely out of there. I then walked a little farther down the corridor and wondered what to do next. I decided to take a chance and walk back past the door and take a quick peek inside. That’s when I caught Raymond wheeling Lester toward the French doors, which appeared to lead out to a patio with lots of tables and chairs.

  I walked back into the room and crossed over to the doors. There were even more residents out on the patio and I saw a small table with only two chairs that was partially hidden by a half wall, and luck was on my side because Raymond had wheeled Lester over to a table on the other side of the half wall, and the two men were facing away from me.

  Ducking quickly out the door, I edged over to the table and took a seat. Pretending to fiddle with my phone, I eavesdropped in on their conversation. “. . . nothing I can’t take care of, Lester. Just a little fingerprint dust. The thing I can’t figure out is, who went in there and painted the place and cleaned it up? I tell you it’s the damnedest thing. One day the place is a mess—I mean, I was getting ready to clear all that junk out—and I came back three days later and it’s clean as a whistle and freshly painted.”

  “That house has always been strange,” Lester said. “I keep thinking maybe we shouldn’t keep renting it out.”

  Eades made a dismissive sound. “You need the money if you’re gonna stay here, Les. You can’t make the rent on this place without the rent on that one.”

  Lester was quiet for a moment; then he said, “I hear you, but it seems like over the years that house has attracted more than its fair share of trouble. Remember that killer Guy Walker? I couldn’t believe I’d rented the place to a man so evil. And before him there was Bill Radcliff. He killed those two young sisters. Terrible man.”

  “And now we’ve had two more like that with Luke and Dan. I’d say it was the neighborhood, but none of the other houses has had that kind of trouble. I was hoping that raising the rent would solve the issue of bringing in the wrong kind of people, but it didn’t work with Luke Decker, so now I don’t know what we should do.”

  “Burn it,” I heard Lester say, but he said it so softly I almost didn’t catch it.

  Raymond also didn’t quite catch it. “What’s that?” he said.

  Lester sighed. “Ray, I want you to promise me something,” Lester said.

  “Anything, Les. You know that.”

  Akers lowered his voice and I had to strain to hear. “After I’m gone, I want you to burn that house to the ground. The wiring’s old, and it wouldn’t take much to get it to overload. You’re an electrician. You know how to make it look like an accident, right?”

  Ray made a sound like he was incredulous and I peeked up over the half wall to see him staring wide-eyed at his friend. “Les . . .”

  “Promise me, Raymond. Promise me.”

  Before Ray could say anything more, however, they were suddenly interrupted by another male voice. “Mr. Akers, Nurse Killjoy says that she found your medications under your pillow this morning.”

  “Hey, Doc,” Akers said. “Nice day out, don’t you think?”

  “Lester,” the doctor said sternly. I took another peek over the half wall at the handsome doctor in scrubs staring down at Lester. Still, there was a little grin on his face, and I suspected this was a game the two men played often.

  “That stuff makes me tired,” Lester complained.

  “It’d make you less tired if you took it on a regular basis and allowed your system to adjust to it.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Don’t much care, Lester,” the doc said, and held out his closed hand. I suspected the meds in question were in the doc’s hand.

  “You think they’re so great, you take ’em,” Lester said. He was turning into a bit of a child about it.

  “Les,” Raymond said. “You gotta take your meds.”

  “We could let the cancer continue to attack your bones unchecked,” the doc said. “But you complain so much about the pain in your back that I think you might prefer being a little tired to curled up in the fetal position from the pain.”

  “You play dirty,” Lester said.

  “It’s my job to keep you alive and in as little pain as possible, buddy,” the doctor said kindly, still holding out his hand.

  Lester finally held out his own hand, palm up. “How about I promise to take them at lunch?”

  “How about you take them now while I’m watching?”

  “How long I know you, Doc?” Lester said, still bargaining.

  “Too long,” the doctor said with a chuckle. “And talking about me when I was a young Doogie Howser who barely knew his way around a medical ward won’t get you out of taking these meds right now.”

  Over a speaker attached to one of the corners of the building, a voice said, “Dr. Fitzstephens, Dr. Danghame, Dr. Lucas, and Dr. Morgan to the conference room, please.”

  “Ooo,” Lester said with a chuckle. “That’s you, Mickey. Better get going if you’re gonna make that presentation. I hear that pretty drug rep from Pfizer brought the good doughnuts and coffee.”

  The handsome doctor folded his arms across his chest. “Take the pills, Les,” he said.

  Lester sighed dramatically and popped the pills into his mouth. The doc then unfolded his arms and reached into his lab coat pocket; pulling out a bottled water, he handed it to Les. “Drink it down,” he said. “You’ll need to hydrate with those.”

  Lester grumbled something else but drank the water. The doc then asked Lester to open his mouth and lift up his tongue. Even though I couldn’t see Les’s face, I’m assuming he cooperated because the doctor then nodded and said, “I’ll tell Kirsten she has an admirer out here. Maybe she’ll come out after the show and bring you a doughnut.”

  “Maybe pigs will fly,” Lester said, and he and Raymond chuckled.

  The doctor joined in and then waved his good-byes. “I hate those damn pills,” Lester complained after the doc had gone.

  “If they keep you from being in pain, I say they’re worth it,” Raymond told him.

  “I�
�m always in pain anyway and on those pills I lose track of stuff,” Lester said next. “You know I gotta keep alert.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” his friend said. “That’s not pills, Les. That’s old age.”

  “Bah,” Lester said. “I say let the cancer take its toll. I got no love for this place now that I can’t walk.”

  “You’d leave me?” Raymond said playfully.

  “To be with my Rosie? In a heartbeat.”

  Under my nose I smelled a small waft of sweet perfume and had the sense that the spirit of the woman named Rosie was tapping me on the shoulder.

  “God rest Rosie,” Raymond said. “Worst thing I ever did was introduce the two of you. I could’ve had her if I’d kept her from meeting you.”

  Lester scoffed. “Like that woulda stopped us. One look and we knew, Ray. All it took was that one look.”

  “You still catch yourself signing?” Ray asked.

  Lester held up his hands and made several motions that were clearly sign language.

  Ray signed something back and the two men laughed.

  “Sometimes, when I dream, I swear I can still hear her voice,” Lester said. “It’s been sixty years since she was able to say a word and I can still hear the sound of it in my head. She had such a pretty voice. Such a shame she lost it.”

  “Ahh,” Ray said, waving his hand dismissively. “She got on just fine without it.”

  The two men talked on and the whole time the gentle spirit of the woman I knew was Rose stood next to me, as if listening in too. Gradually I detected a slight slur come into Lester’s speech, and then his head began to droop. “Yep,” Ray said, getting to his feet. “Those drugs are starting to take their effect. Let’s get you back to your room for a nice nap and I’ll be by later this afternoon for a game of cards.”

  I shifted in my chair away from Ray as he maneuvered Les out from the table and back toward the French doors. I felt Rose’s energy hover around me for a little longer and I had the sense that she was asking me to go talk to Lester again on her behalf, but I wasn’t willing to do that. There were too many questions still at play here and I had to get home and wake Gilley up in order to ask those questions, because I suspected that Kendra had discovered Lester here at the center, but what his link to Sy the Slayer was I still wasn’t absolutely sure. I had my suspicions, but I wasn’t positive.

  After waiting for about five minutes to make sure Ray and Lester weren’t around, I got up and headed back through the living room, keeping my eyes on the floor as I walked down the corridor back to the front entrance. The automatic doors opened and I trotted to my car, feeling anxious until I was safely behind the wheel. As I started the engine, however, something really weird happened. I put the car into drive—I’d pulled forward through one space into the other so I was facing out of it, which gave me a clear view of the center—and as I was about to take my foot off the brake, I saw a shadow slide across the white stucco and slink its way through the glass doors.

  It happened so quickly that I almost didn’t think it was real. But then the seed of an idea began to form in my mind and I truly hoped I was wrong. With renewed determination, I headed home.

  I found Heath snoring softly, his hand sweetly extended toward my side of the bed, as if, even in sleep, he wanted to be reassured of my presence. I moved to his side and kissed his cheek. The faintest hint of a smile spread to his lips, but then he fell back into snoring softly again and I left him alone.

  Tiptoeing out of the room, I made my way down to Gilley’s place and knocked. There was no answer, so I used the key Gil had given me years ago when we’d first bought our respective condos, and let myself in. There was an eerie quiet about the place and I hesitated for a few seconds in the kitchen before moving deeper into the condo. I didn’t know if Gil had kept his vest close all night and the memory of seeing that shadow move across the face of the nursing home was still fresh in my mind. “Gil?” I called softly. I felt a little guilty about waking him up, but what I needed to know wouldn’t wait. “Gil?”

  I heard rustling in the bedroom and headed in that direction. “Gilley?” I called again, knocking on his bedroom door. “Honey, I need your help. Are you up?”

  The door was abruptly opened and Gil stood there, disheveled and quite unhappy to see me. “Don’t you sleep?”

  “It’s nine thirty,” I said, lifting my wrist to show him my watch.

  “Oh,” he said, looking surprised as he tipped forward to look at the time. “Well, then . . . come back in an hour.” With that, he shut the door in my face.

  I sighed impatiently and tried the handle. Before I could even get my hand on it, though, I heard the click of the lock. “Gil,” I said sternly as I knocked a few times just to let him know I wasn’t going away. “Come on! I think I found the lead that Kendra was trying to tell me about yesterday.”

  “In an hour!”

  “It can’t wait that long!”

  There was no answer, so I began knocking again and didn’t let up. Just about the time I was convinced there were bruises forming on my knuckles, Gil unlocked the door and pulled it open, only to glare hard at me. “You are such a pain in the ass—you know that, M.J.?”

  “I love you too, Gilley.”

  He shook his head and rolled his eyes, but he didn’t try to shut the door in my face again. Instead he moved past me, heading toward the kitchen. He stopped in front of the counter and snapped, “You didn’t even get the coffee started?”

  “Sorry!” I said, moving quickly to get that going. Gil was much easier to handle fully caffeinated. Once I had the coffee brewing, I said, “Want to hear what I found out?”

  Gil sat moodily on one of the barstools at the kitchen counter and watched me through puffy, narrowed eyes. “No.”

  I ignored that and told him everything that’d happened at the nursing home. Just like I’d hoped, the coffee and the events of that morning had their effect and he started to show some interest. “So, you think Lester Akers has something to do with Sy the Slayer.”

  “Yes, but I’m not sure what. Still, he is the spitting image of the man who attacked me in my out-of-body experience from the other day, even if the guy I met today in the nursing home seemed genuinely charming and sincere. I can’t figure out what the actual connection is, but while you’re researching Lester Akers, I’m going to make a call and try to put another piece of this puzzle into place.”

  Gil nodded and shuffled off the barstool. Moving over to the couch, he pulled his laptop close and got to work.

  Meanwhile I dug out my cell and called Courtney. “Hello?” she asked, and I could tell that she’d seen the caller ID and was surprised to hear from me.

  “Courtney?”

  “Yes, M.J., what can I do for you?”

  “I have a question for you and I need a straight answer. It’s critical that you be honest with me, okay?”

  “I’ve been honest with you,” she said sharply.

  “I’m not doubting that, but this question isn’t something I think you’ll want to confess the answer to, because you’re going to want to protect your brother, but you have to be honest with me, okay?”

  “What’s the question?” she asked, and I couldn’t tell if she was willing to tell me the truth.

  “Did your brother have a relationship with Brook Astor?”

  There was no answer for so long that I had to call out to Courtney again. “I’m here,” she said. “M.J., I’m not sure that I can answer that.”

  “Listen,” I said, “I have to know, Courtney. Please.”

  I heard her let out a breath and then she said, “Yes. Luke met Brook when they both worked on the senior center foundation’s fund-raiser. Luke worked there briefly a year and a half ago. At the time, Brook was going through a divorce and my brother was a shoulder she felt she could lean on. To him she was older and more sophisticated than the girls
he was used to seeing. He fell for her. Hard. But I know my brother, and I know he would never hurt Brook. He adored her—even after she broke his heart, he talked about what a good influence she’d been in his life. He wasn’t angry. He was grateful.”

  “I believe you,” I told her. She was defending someone I was now convinced was innocent. I simply knew that the same person who’d attacked Brook had also attacked Kendra, but how that person was connected back to Sy the Slayer was something I was still trying to work out. “Listen, I’m close to solving this thing, so don’t lose hope, okay?”

  “You’re close to . . . ? You mean you’re still investigating? Even after what happened to that poor reporter last night?”

  “You know about Kendra?” I asked in return.

  “Yes, of course, I was a surgical consult. She lost a considerable amount of blood and we were worried about her brain function. I saw you and Heath in the waiting room last night—in fact, I was the one that had the nurse tell you how Kendra was doing. Normally that information is strictly reserved for family.”

  I almost didn’t know what to say. “Thanks, Courtney,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”

  “Would you like to be updated about her condition?”

  “I would,” I said. “If it’s not going to get you in trouble.”

  “It won’t. But please be careful and discreet with any information I give you about her condition.”

  I promised I would be and got off the phone. “Hey,” Gil said as I stood there, thinking through the puzzle pieces and trying to put them into place. “I’ve got something for you.”

  I moved over to sit next to him. “Tell me.”

  “Lester Akers, not Atkins as Foster mispronounced it, is seventy-eight years old, widowed, and his last known residence was Seven-five-seven-three Comm Ave.”

  I gasped. “That’s the building next door to Courtney’s!”

  “Yep. He lived there for over fifty years.”

  “Tell me what else,” I said, feeling my heartbeat tick up and knowing Gil had more to share.

  “Lester was a twin. His identical twin brother was killed in a hunting accident in nineteen sixty-eight. Guess what his twin brother’s name was.”