Deadly Cost of Goods

by Margaret Evans

  His head moved left and right as he tried to estimate how far into the library they had seen…the ghost.

  “I would say about the fourth downspout in.”

  “And up on the third row of windows?”

  “Yes.”

  She shone the light on the side of the wall and stopped at each downspout to look for any anomalies. When she got to the fourth downspout, she stopped to examine it more closely.

  “Look at this, Sammy.”

  “Yeah, a streak. I see it.”

  She checked the fifth downspout which was at the far back corner of the building.

  “Okay, there’s something we need to do and I’ll explain to Connor why I want it done. Don’t mention to another person what we’re even looking at or what we saw. Got it?”

  He nodded.

  “Let’s wait for the top cops to leave and just wander around here a bit longer, okay?”

  Chief Mallory was heading their way.

  They exchanged the flashlight behind her back.

  “Hey, Chief Mallory. I was just thinking how lucky we were to have just enough light this evening.”

  “Yes, we were. And I want to thank both of you for a job well done. You, Laura, made a fine ghost, I heard. We only saw it remotely, but you definitely distracted everyone. Any idea what that was on the other side of the library?”

  She looked puzzled and turned to Sammy, grateful he had put on his cop face.

  “I saw some lights, but they could have been flashlights or flashes from gunfire.”

  Mallory seemed satisfied.

  “Thanks, I wasn’t sure. Well, I’m headed out. Congrats again to both of you for a job well done.”

  With that, he was off, in his car, and so were the rest of the team and department heads. Only Chief Fitzpatrick stayed behind.

  “You lied to a police chief, Laura,” Sam commented mildly.

  “No, I didn’t. I did see lights and I only suggested what they might have been.”

  “I remember stuff like this from when you babysat me.”

  “I didn’t want you to get into trouble for something minor.”

  “And I appreciated it, but now? This might be different.”

  “What’s different?” Connor asked, coming up behind them.

  “I want to show you something, Connor.”

  She showed him the streak that ran from the third floor window to the ground behind the fourth downspout.

  “So?”

  “It looks an awful lot like it’s been whitewashed a number of times but the streak keeps bleeding through. Tell him, Sam.”

  Connor turned to his officer.

  “This is coming from a window on the third floor in front of which we believe the…apparition appeared on the mezzanine. Same spot.”

  Connor turned to Laura.

  “Hey, I’m just sayin’.”

  “Sam, take some scrapings from this streak. Make sure you get deep into the streak and put it into an evidence bag. Use gloves.”

  “Yes, sir. And Sarge? I noticed that the ground around this downspout isn’t as green as the other ones. I haven’t checked the other side of the building yet.”

  “Go check the other side. Take pictures of this one.”

  Just then, Chief Fitzpatrick wound his way over to them.

  “Whatever you’re into right now, wrap it up and let’s go to your shop, Laura. We have to talk. Mallory has closed off the building until it can be fully examined by a structural engineer.”

  * * *

  It was all four of them—Chief Fitzpatrick, Connor, Sven, and Sam—who took Laura home. She brought in folding chairs from the workroom so they’d all fit into the kitchenette behind the shop, but left them against the work table because nobody needed them.

  Michael chose to stand, arms crossed, against the doorway from the workroom. Connor, in a similar stance as his father, leaned back against the closed door to Laura’s apartment. Laura stood in front of her fridge, Sven stood by the half-bath one hand on each side of his tool belt, and Sam was the only one who took a chair.

  “Okay,” Michael began. “Nothing we discuss here leaves this room. I want you all to know that I sense the urgency of getting into that building as quickly as possible. Your boss, Chief Mallory, may not realize what I think Laura has guessed, so he may not be aware of the urgency. He’s on his way to the airport for another week’s trip abroad with his wife, so who knows when he’ll call a structural engineer to check out the Old Library. I have a friend who will drop everything he’s doing and bring a team over here tomorrow or the next day.

  “Now, Laura. Tell us where you think Lorelei is.”

  At his spoken words, Sven and Sammy looked alert.

  Connor spoke first.

  “Sam and Laura noticed a streak on the outside wall running behind the fourth downspout from the third floor to the ground,” Connor said. “Sam also noticed the ground around the downspout has a lot of dead grass, unlike the other nine downspouts which run along both sides of the library. Go, Laura.”

  “The streak on the wall behind the fourth downspout looks like it’s been whitewashed with lime a bunch of times and yet the streak has bled through each layer. Back in 1918 when Lorelei disappeared, chlorine bleach was not generally available to the public, nor were there any good sealants. Resin bleeds through whitewash, according to my father, so why not other strong substances, like body fluids?”

  “You think she’s up there, buried in a wall or something?”

  “I think that’s where she died, Chief. Whether her body is still up there or not, I couldn’t say.”

  He stepped into the workroom and made a phone call, came back a couple of minutes later. It was quiet in the kitchenette with everyone avoiding each other’s eyes. Michael broke the spell.

  “Okay, we’re all set. My friend, the structural engineer, will be here tomorrow with his team. We’ll know by end of day if it’s safe for us to explore. I can’t stress enough that you mention this to no one who isn’t in this room. No emails and no texts. If you hear a rumor or anyone asks you about what you saw today, you don’t know what you saw. You saw our decoy, some lights, maybe someone using a mirror. Nothing else.”

  “Sir,” Sammy asked. “What if the chief comes back and asks?”

  “You tell Chief Mallory exactly what I just said. I’ll get with him later when we know more.”

  The call to Fitzpatrick came in late on Thursday. The building was fine.

  He called Laura and told her to bring Father Eddy Barlow with her to the Old Library Friday morning. His wife, Alison, would watch her store again.

  Chapter 37

  They would need vents, Laura was thinking. “There would be small holes behind the downspout to hide them, and if there was any residual smell, it could have been attributed to a dead rat or muskrat or raccoon that got into the attic crawl space. That would be my guess. What would they have had to waterproof things back then?”

  “Oil cloths or tarring, something like that. I see your brain churning. What are you thinking?” Nolan Frye asked. He had scheduled an off-schedule non-Wednesday meeting Friday morning at the Old Library. The police tape still roped off the area and a few officers guarded it.

  Frye, both Fitzpatricks and Laura were standing in the main open area on the first floor.

  “We already know from library records and newspaper archives that the library maintenance was done on a regular biennial schedule except for the year that Lorelei disappeared. A fire in the company’s warehouse destroyed their supplies and they had to order more which didn’t arrive from their supplier in Connecticut until about a week before Lorelei disappeared. Also, historically, they closed off one side of the library at a time as they did the work for safety reasons. Connor guessed which side was closed off during the time Lorelei disappeared and I’m willing to bet that you’ll guess correctly, as well, Agent Frye.

  “The kicker is that the whole maintenance operation was run by Barnabas Evers, a Dowell, who owne
d the warehouse with its supplies and hired the workers. A Dowell whose family disappeared, we believe, during the 1930s.”

  Frye was silent a moment, then exchanged a glance with Michael Fitzpatrick.

  “Okay, that’s all very good to know. We can follow up if you give me the information you have. How’s your progress been on research in the families?”

  “It’s slow. I’m tracking from the original town inhabitants forward, and I’m also tracking today’s residents backwards through the Find Your Families website. It’s taking me forever. I’m stuck with twelve people right now that I can find nowhere.”

  “Keep at it; and don’t tell anyone, as we agreed.”

  “Remember,” Laura said, “the Kovacs brothers and Beth were at your house, Chief, for Christmas, and we all but told them what we were going to do.”

  “Yes,” Michael said, “but they’ve been given the word not to say anything until we give them approval, and they don’t know that you’re the one doing the research.”

  “Okay, then,” Frye said. “The others are here. Time to look for Lorelei.”

  Chapter 38

  Keene knew and she didn’t know.

  She stood with Father Edward Barlow, just after he arrived, at the foot of the circular staircase that wound its way to the right-hand third floor mezzanine where the FBI forensics teams were working. Board by board, each piece of interior wall was taken removed in the rooms that ran along the outer walls of the Old Library, accessible only from the hidden passageways between them and the main library area. Laura pointed to the back wall of the building where she told Eddy about the magnificent eagle on the stained glass window, crated for its preservation. She recited the words that ran on the banner below the bird collected by her memory and preserved from her two visits there many years ago.

  “I remember it, Laura. When I was little, your Aunt Rose brought my mother and me to the Old Library, not long after it closed. She said she wanted us to see the beautiful window before they boarded it up. We all saw something else that day that I can never forget. It’s one of the reasons I became a priest.”

  “I didn’t know you saw her.”

  He nodded.

  When the shout from above came, they both jumped.

  “Chief! We found something.”

  That was Laura’s and Barlow’s cue to climb the staircase and wait at the top but keep out of everyone’s way. It was odd what they saw up there. A small group of people scurrying in and out of one of the rooms with a window.

  “Under the window,” they both heard.

  Laura knew that Lorelei had been found.

  But the most amazing thing that no one in their wildest dreams could imagine happened when Laura and Eddy approached the door to the room.

  Laura’s head jerked to the left, as did Eddy’s, and they saw Lorelei as clearly as they had by the mezzanine rail. She was floating, like a wisp of mist, her features clearing and fading in the swirls of whatever was stirring her clothing and hair.

  Right in front of them in the corridor.

  The child was no longer imploring Laura. She reached out her hands with a smile. Her whispers were barely audible, more like breath, her pinafore stirred by a current of air.

  “Thank you.”

  Father Barlow made the sign of the cross over her, said a prayer and blessed her.

  Lorelei’s spirit whispered, “God bless you both.”

  She turned back to Laura and smiled again before she faded, faded, and was gone.

  Father Barlow’s arm around Laura’s shoulders shook her out of wherever she was locked, and he told her, “She’s at rest now, Laura. She’s at peace.”

  It was then that they realized the incredible silence in the library. They looked about and saw all work had stopped and everyone was staring at them, and staring at the place where Lorelei’s spirit had been.

  Chief Fitzpatrick was still in shock when the Medical Examiner asked if Laura wanted to see what they found. Fitzpatrick shook himself free and walked with Laura to the cavity beneath the window. He motioned for Father Barlow to come closer.

  “Just remember, no holy water, and don’t touch anything.”

  An end cap on a window seat had been pried away, and when they shone their lights inside, the top was also removed. It was beneath the very window close to the downspout on the outside of the wall where Laura had spotted the vertical streak behind the spout running down the building from the third floor to the ground.

  Inside the hollow lay a mass of crumbled tar paper which the M.E. and his assistant were photographing and taking off pieces, one by one, and storing them in evidence bags which a second assistant was marking and dating. As more pieces of the tar paper were carefully removed, what had been wrapped inside became visible.

  Bones.

  Lorelei’s bones.

  Laura leaned forward for a better look, her heart breaking as she saw the skull—oh, so small—and two scraggly braids that would have been the same color as her own. Bits of dried tar and tar paper were crumbling everywhere and disintegrating, even as they gently tried to pull it off the child’s remains. Her little arm bones, finger bones, pieces of ragged clothing still covered part of her. Even after a hundred years, Laura could still make out remnants of the dark blue plaid dress and her white pinafore, though eaten through by insects.

  Father Barlow prayed over and blessed the remains in the window seat. He knew exactly whose they were. He would never forget that she asked God to bless him. There was no doubt he would also need that, if not now, with viewing this horrible tragedy, then at some point in the future.

  “What are these?” one of the forensics assistants asked. “They don’t look human.”

  The M.E. turned his attention to the pile of very small bones in the corner of the cavity.

  “This is a small animal. From the triangular head shape, it could be a small cat or kitten.”

  Laura said nothing for no one here knew the story except one or two, and they certainly didn’t have the level of detail that Laura did.

  “There’s something around the animal’s neck,” Connor pointed out. “A string or ribbon with a piece of leather.”

  One of the FBI forensics experts squinted at the leather strip that appeared to have some letters burned into it.

  “Looks like I-S-A-B-E-L-L-A. Must have been the cat’s name. The cat’s neck is broken. The rest of the bones look intact.”

  Laura’s breath caught at the name.

  Just then Nolan Frye stepped forward from the wall against which he had been leaning.

  “I know better than to ask at this point, but any guess as to the child’s cause of death?”

  “I’ll know more when I get her into the lab, but her hyoid bone is crushed which indicates strangulation. There’s also a slight indentation on the left side of her skull. She might have fallen and been stunned or someone may have hit her then strangled her. Either way, she was murdered.”

  At once, an image filled Laura’s head of a little girl, her kitten in her pocket, holding a library book she had just checked out and her library card. Lured to the side of the building that was closed for maintenance, she was grabbed from behind and the book and her card flew out of her hands.

  It was time for Laura to speak.

  “Can you get any DNA from her teeth?”

  The M.E. looked at her.

  “You want confirmation she’s your long-lost relative. I’ll see what I can do. With how she’s been wrapped tight and sealed in tar all these years, even though it’s mostly dried out, there might be a chance we can pull something for a test. Do we have your DNA?”

  Three people said yes at once: Michael Fitzpatrick, Connor Fitzpatrick, and Laura Keene.

  But Laura couldn’t tear her eyes away from the child who had been jammed into the window seat. Her knees were up to her shoulders, feet bent to the side, arms and hands crossed over all. Just to make her fit.

  Chief Fitzpatrick nodded to his son that it was time for La
ura to go home.

  As they turned to go, Corporal Sven Mortensen stopped them.

  “Uh, I don’t really know how to ask this, but whatever we thought we saw the other day and what we thought we saw today? Well, there’s no disturbance in the dust on the floor where whatever that was, was standing.”

  “I know,” Connor responded.

  “Well, I don’t know what to do with that.”

  “Sure you do.”

  Laura looked up at Sven.

  “Just like seventeen years ago, we saw a real, live ghost or spirit essence. Lorelei Rage has been dead for a hundred years. She’s been trapped here all this time. Now that Father Barlow has blessed her and we found her, she is free to rest in peace. And no one will ever see her again.”

  Sven looked doubtful.

  “It was a ghost, Mortensen,” Connor said. “But now you have to forget you saw that ghost and you can’t tell a single soul. Ever.”

  “What about the pictures we got, Sergeant?”

  That caught everyone off-guard.

  “What?” Laura asked.

  The young forensic anthropologist held up his iPhone.

  “I got her or it or whatever it was. Held down the button so there are lots. Got videos, too.”

  “Me, too,” an FBI agent spoke up.

  Another agent held up his phone as well.

  Sven Mortensen looked puzzled. “I didn’t think people could take pictures of ghosts.”

  “Well, here she is,” the forensic scientist said, holding up his phone for all to see.

  The two FBI agents were puzzled when no imagery was apparent on their Android phones.

  The Medical Examiner pulled his assistant’s phone towards him.

  “Holy cow! Come see this, Michael.”

  Of course, everyone there became “Michael” and they all crowded around to see the images captured on the iPhone.

  At one point the scientist had pressed the video button, and the image of curly, twirls of mist morphed. In one image they could see a nose, in another, part of a braid, and they also saw he had captured the vanishing vapor as it faded and Lorelei’s spirit disappeared completely.