by Flynn, Mac
She floated towards the house. "It's easier if I show you, and maybe you're smarter than you look and will see something I missed."
Chapter 4
Harriet led us up the slight hill toward the house. I sidled up to Vince and lowered my voice. "You think she's telling the truth about this whole murder business and us needing to find her body to put her at peace?" I whispered.
"We will see," he replied.
"So in your cute little way you're saying you don't know?" I teased. I thought I detected a hint of color in his cheeks. "Is the great Vince the Vampire blushing?"
"No."
"Then you might want to rub that rouge off your cheeks. It doesn't become you."
"What are you two whispering back there?" Harriet screeched.
I gave her a wide, scary smile and gestured to a bunch of overgrown, thorny roses we passed. "Just admiring your yard."
A beaming smile slipped onto her lips and her eyes took on a faraway look. "You should have seen it when I was alive. This place was the envy of the street," she bragged. We reached the side of the house where lay a wooden cellar door set into at an angle in the ground and against the siding of the house. She gestured to the pair of metal handles and a fresh lock. "I used to be down there," she informed us.
"Why the fresh lock?" I asked her.
"Every year Bobby gets a new one just to make sure nobody gets in," she explained.
Vince knelt in front of the doors and grasped the lock in one hand. He pulled a large ring of keys from inside his jacket and tried them one at a time. "Why don't you just crush the lock with your hand?" I suggested.
"A broken lock would raise suspicion, and if we cannot approach him to interrogate him about the body then we must keep him off his guard so he may lead us to it," he told me. The lock snapped open and Vince set it aside and opened one of the doors.
Our supernatural eyes allowed us to see into the dark, dank gloom of the basement. The floor was made of earth and a short flight of long, narrow steps led to the ground. Vince led the way down the steps and into the large square room. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling which was open to the sub-floor. Frayed electrical wires twisted and crossed over one another in their attempts to supply the house with power. Short tubes of rusted old water pipes were disconnected from each other and hung low enough to knock into our heads. The smell of mold permeated every corner of the crowded room where wooden and cardboard boxes were stacked to the ceiling and rotten from the damp. In the far right corner sat the stairs that gave entrance to the house.
"Glad we didn't buy the place," I muttered.
"I was over here," Harriet directed us.
She led us behind a dusty stack of crates that hid the far left corner of the basement. In the light, dusty brown dirt of the basement floor was a foot deep hole, and around the hole was the dark ground of recently disturbed earth. The ghost gestured to the hole.
"That's where I called my grave for the better part of ten years, and just look at it! The thief didn't even leave me a finger bone!"
Vince knelt before the hole and traced one hand over the disturbed earth. His eyes followed his fingers as they traveled along the lip closest to where we entered this small nook. He turned on his heels and followed a strange pattern in the dirt.
I nodded at the scrape marks. "What are those?"
"Someone dragged a sack to the steps of the basement that lead into the house," Vince surmised.
Harriet scoffed. "That's nothing. I've already seen that, but you should see the mess they made on my old floors. Idiot didn't even wipe his boots before he traipsed across those real hardwood planks!"
Vince stood and a frown crossed his lips. His eyes flickered to Harriet. "Would your son have any reason to hide your body in a new location?"
She shrugged. "How should I know the mind of an idiot?"
"Would he?" Vince persisted.
Harriet sighed and shook her head. "Nothing I could think of, but like I said, he's an idiot and I can't get him to talk to me."
"Why don't I try again?" I offered.
"Do you wish to risk it?" Vince asked me.
I snorted. "I think that's the first time you've ever tried to change my mind about doing something incredibly stupid and dangerous, but yeah, I'll risk it. We don't really have any other choice except for following this dirt trail." I nodded at the clumps of earth left on the narrow steps that led up to the old door into the house.
"We will follow the trail as far as it leads us and then see if we must attempt contact with the son," Vince suggested.
"And I'll give the grand tour," Harriet insisted.
Our ghostly guide led us up the dusty, creaky stairs and through the basement door. Well, she went through the door. We solid people had to open the door. Vince tested the knob and found it unlocked. He opened the door and found Harriet on the other side with a stunned look on her face. We furthered our trespassing by entering the main floor of the house.
"Has your son often left this door unlocked?" Vince asked her.
She shook her head. "Never. He's an idiot, but he'd make a good cow with how he sticks to his routine."
"Then it seems someone was negligent, or didn't care to hide the missing body," Vince deduced.
I looked around where we stood. The stairs opened onto the back of the house. To our right lay the rear door, and to our left was a long hallway that stretched to the front entrance. Doors lined the wall to our immediate left, and a single door lay on the opposite wall. At the front of the house I could see the banister of stairs along that same opposing wall.
The house at one time must have been beautiful, at least judging by the peeling flowered wallpaper and real hardwood floors once shined to a reflective polish but now covered in dust. The ceilings were tall and vents along the lower part of the walls told of a centralized heating system. Alcoves between the doors and two feet off the ground held smashed stone statues, and the wooden baseboards were of a dark, rich, expensive mahogany.
Harriet floated over to one of the statues and glared at it. "That stupid boy thought I hid the money in these statues. They weren't even hollow, but he smashed them to bits, anyway."
Vince and I ignored her prattling. His attention was on the dark earth beneath our feet, and mine was on him. The trail took a right turn outside, and Vince tried the door. Like the basement door this entrance was unlocked. He turned to the fuming phantom.
"Does anyone else-" For the first time I jumped forward and clamped a hand over his mouth. A noise in front of the house had caught my ears.
"I want them trespassed immediately!" we heard Bobby shout.
"I'll tell you one more time. We can't cite someone for trespassing without knowing who they are, and you're telling me you don't know the people who came here," an unknown male voice replied.
"Then find out! I gave you a description of their weird vehicle and its license plate! That should be enough!" Bobby protested.
"Listen, sir, some days we perform miracles, but this might not be one of them. I can run the description of the car and its plate through our list of stolen vehicles and whatnot, but there's no guarantee we can press charges," the other man argued.
"Then do that and get on it! I don't want any snooping around and wrecking the place!" Bobby ordered him. I snorted. They'd have to clean up the place first to wreck it.
"We'll try our best, sir. Let me run that license plate through our database and see what I can find."
Vince slunk down the hall to a tall, narrow window covered by a moth-eaten curtain. I followed, and we both peeked out through the moth holes. Bobby stood on the gravel driveway in front of the house, and in front of him was a police car. I could see the officer inside the car typing the information given to him by Bobby.
"Think they'll find us on record?" I asked Vince.
"Undoubtedly. Tim and I have a long record of eluding the law with the car," he reminded me.
"There goes the plan to coax him into telling us where the family s
keletons are buried," I quipped.
In a moment the officer climbed out of the car with a printout of a picture which he handed to Bobby. "This the car you saw?"
Bobby perused the picture and gave an emphatic nod. "Yes, that's it. Who are they?"
"We don't know, but we consider the owner or owners of the vehicle to be very dangerous. They have more vehicular violations than half the total city," the officer replied.
"So why don't you arrest them?" Bobby questioned him.
The officer shrugged. "We can't catch them, but if you see them again don't approach them. Call us and we'll handle the situation."
"So you're not going to do anything about them right now?" Bobby persisted.
"We can't follow them because we don't know where they went, but we'll keep a patrol car around the block just in case they show up again," the officer promised. "Anyway, have a good night, and don't forget to call us." The officer slipped back into his car and drove away.
Bobby turned away from the leaving vehicle with a sulking expression on his thin, pale face. "Damn cops not protecting me," he mumbled.
Vince slipped away from the window and back to the rear of the house, and Harriet and I followed him. "We must leave before our car is discovered," he commented.
"What about my body?" Harriet insisted.
"We can find nothing of importance here, but do you know of anyone else who might have a key to the house?" Vince asked her.
She furrowed her brow. "There's Bobby's solicitor. Some man named Craig Bartlett. He hired him about four years ago to handle my death proceedings, and he visits every few months. I've never seen him in the house, but he might have a key."
"We will speak with this solicitor and find if he knows anything," Vince suggested.
"You can find his office somewhere along Mephisto Street," Harriet told us.
"We will look for him there." Vince opened the unlocked back door and paused on the threshold. His eyes scrutinized the ground, and I followed his gaze. There wasn't anything unusual about the hard-packed, weedy earth.
"What is it?" I asked him.
"The trail of earth is gone, and yet there are no tracks from a vehicle or wheelbarrow. It seems that whoever stole the bag was perfectly capable of carrying it up the stairs in their arms or over their shoulder," he explained.
"So why didn't they?" I asked him.
"They wished to attract the attention of Morley with the trail of dirt and the unlocked doors," he surmised.
"So it wasn't Bobby who stole my body?" Harriet questioned him.
"I don't believe so, but we will speak with the solicitor and see what he knows," Vince replied.
"Well, don't take too long. I'm not getting any younger here," Harriet scolded us.
Chapter 5
We trudged through the wilderness to our car. The cop hadn't yet noticed our dark vehicle among the dark shadows of the tall trees. Harriet floated behind us, but stopped at the edge of the weed-choked lawn. "I can't go any farther than this, but if you need to get a hold of me I'm always around the hollow tree," she informed us.
"We will speak with you later this evening, or tomorrow night," Vince promised.
We slipped into the car and drove down the road, mindful of police cars. I glanced over my shoulder at the property and was in time to see Harriet fade into nothing. "So is she trapped on the property until we bury here?" I asked my partner.
"No. The ghost is trapped to the property on which they are buried," he explained.
"So does that mean the bones are still somewhere on the grounds?" I guessed.
"Yes."
"And there's no way of using Harriet as a divining rod or pointer?"
"Very little. The grounds are extensive and if the bones are buried deep she may not feel a connection," he revealed.
"So what are we hoping to get from this solicitor guy? And what is a solicitor?" I asked him.
"A solicitor is an old term for an attorney, and I don't expect anything to come of this interview unless he might inform us about the insignia and the boy's acquisition of the anti-supernatural items," Vince replied.
In a few minutes we reached Mephisto Street. It was an older part of the business district where the buildings hardly rose above one floor and most were made of aged and discolored bricks. The streetlights flickered, but usually kept up a steady light, and many of the shops were closed at the hour we arrived. Most had dim lights behind their large windows and etchings of their business names on the glass. We puttered past the shops until we found Bartlett's building, a small, single-story brick structure with a large window beside the heavy wooden door. Another large window to the right of the front door had closed curtains and was dark.
I was surprised to see the lights were still inside and the curtains were opened. The window and lights revealed a small waiting room with a few chairs against the left-hand wall, and a wall with a small window at the rear that separated the waiting room from the rest of the building. There was a door to the right of the window that allowed entrance to the rear.
Vince parked the car and we approached the entrance. "Think we should knock?" I asked him.
He answered by opening the door and stepping inside. I followed, and a small jingle of a bell overhead alerted the occupant to our presence. In a moment a tall man of sixty appeared at the window in the rear wall and smiled at us. He wore a dark-blue suit with spectacles on his face. His whitish hair was slicked back and his large hands showed ink stains from notarizing documents.
"Good evening. What can I do for you?" he asked us in a bright, cheerful voice.
"We wish to discuss a client of yours, one Mr. Robert Morley," Vince told him.
The man raised an eyebrow and slipped from the window. The side-door opened and he slipped into the waiting room and shut the opening behind him. "I'm afraid the attorney-client privilege means I can't speak about any personal matters, but might I ask why you're inquiring?"
Vince stepped up to him and his glasses dropped. The vampire's red eyes stared into Bartlett's own, and the old man's body loosened and his eyes drooped. "We wish to know of Morley and his mother."
Bartlett spoke in a mechanical-sounding voice. "Mrs. Morley is dead, but Bobby fears she still haunts him."
"Is that why he has the spiritual protections in and around his cottage?" Vince questioned him.
"Yes. He fears she will take his life, and he himself has discussed suicide many times to free himself of her influence," Bartlett explained.
"Do you know where he purchased the anti-supernatural items?"
The human shook his head. "No."
"Has he acted strangely within the last week?"
"Yes."
"How so?"
"I visited him six days ago and noticed he had dirt from the basement on his shoes. When I asked him where he'd been he refused to tell me and he ordered me to leave. I have not been back."
"And you know nothing of the body of Harriet Morley?"
"Nothing but that it was never found." Vince frowned, but held one of his hands in front of the man's face. He snapped his fingers and Bartlett swayed and clutched his head with one hand. The attorney glanced between our faces. "What-what happened?" he asked us.
"You have been very helpful," Vince replied.
Bartlett blinked at us. "I have?"
"Yes, now we must bid you goodnight." Vince bowed his head and left.
"Um, thanks for the help," I added, and hurried after my partner. I found Vince waiting for me by the car. "Did he really help us?" I asked him.
"Very little, but we have now confirmed the body has been missing since the last week," he pointed out.
"That's great, but we still don't know where the body is and our only lead turned out to be as dead as our client," I countered.
"If the living cannot help us then maybe the dead can, and that is why we must secure a dog capable of finding dead bodies," he replied. He slipped into the car and I stepped up to his open window.
"
We're not going to go steal a police dog, are we?" I asked him.
"No, we will be borrowing a Parasquad dog," he revealed.
"A Parasquad dog? They have dogs?" I wondered.
He started the engine. "Yes, but the night is marching on and we must hurry if we're to put to rest our client this night."
We drove to our usual manhole entrance into the drudges of the supernatural society that lay beneath the city. The tunnels were lit with the torches, and I expected to see the hulking, shadowy figure of Officer Romero give us his customary greeting.
I sidled up to Vince as we trudged through the dank tunnels. "So how exactly are we going to get a Parasquad dog? I mean, don't they need those for official paranormal business?" I asked him.
"Officer Romero owns one of the beasts, and may allow us use of it," he explained.
"Uh-huh, you mean the officer we keep leaving high-and-dry with information?" I quipped.
"The same," he agreed.
"I don't think that's going to make him want to hand over his dog."
"Then perhaps information may be traded for the dog."
"You're getting pretty desperate for the dog, aren't you?"
"We have no other leads," he reminded me.
I sighed and let my shoulders droop. "Don't remind me. Here we are on a case and even your detective skills aren't up to the challenge."
"The detective work hasn't failed until we give up," he countered.
A smile slipped onto my lips. "That's pretty optimistic coming from you."
He turned away from me so he faced straight ahead. "I must blame you for such thoughts."
I straightened and grinned. "I'll take the blame, and wear it like a badge of honor." We reached the underground city and found it as lively as ever. Monsters walked to and fro on their shopping missions, and others plied their wares on the different levels or in the rows of shops. Unfortunately, there was still no sign of Romero. "Think he's out on another beat?" I asked my partner.
Vince pursed his lips and shook his head. "No, but he may be on assignment."