by Nathan Roden
“That sounds a little strange when you put it all together like that,” I said. “But that about covers it.”
Sixteen
The Ghost Detectives
McIntyre Village, Scotland
Scottie hustled toward the train station. He turned up his coat collar and shoved his hands deep into his pockets.
“Is that one of them?” Delbert asked Arabella. Delbert hurried to keep up as they followed Scottie Rose.
Arabella hovered and then floated backward. She peered into Scottie’s face. Scottie paused briefly and waved his hand in front of his face as if he had stepped into a swarm of gnats. Arabella gave up and shook her head.
“It could be,” she said. “But I can’t tell for sure. We’ll just have to see where he goes. The worst thing that can happen is that we start over tomorrow night.”
Delbert and Dougie groaned. Bruiser gave them a dirty look.
“He’s going to take the train,” Bruiser said.
“The what?” Arabella said.
“Whoa,” Dougie said.
Arabella stopped when she saw the train approach the passenger platform where Scottie Rose waited.
“What is that thing?” she whispered.
“You’ve never seen a passenger train?” Bruiser asked.
Arabella shook her head as she stared.
“Well, after your first trip on a jumbo jet,” Delbert said, “This should be a piece of cake.”
“All aboard!” Dougie shouted.
“What did he say?” Arabella asked.
“It means get your pretty little self movin’, cause when them doors close that thing is gonna be off like a cannon,” Bruiser said. “You know all about cannons, right, Sister?”
Arabella nodded as Bruiser grabbed her hand and got them aboard the train just in time. Her head lolled on her shoulders as the train accelerated, and her complexion took on a greenish tint.
The four ghosts settled into the ride, paying full attention to the man in the bowler hat and glasses. He took a seat in a far corner, much to the dismay of a young couple that hoped to snuggle up and be alone there. They gave the man a nasty look as they moved away in search of privacy.
The man reached for his glasses and removed them. He took off the bowler hat.
“It IS him,” Arabella said. “I would bet a king’s ransom that he’s one of them.”
“I think so, too,” Bruiser said. “What do you guys think?”
Delbert and Dougie nodded.
Arabella, Bruiser, Delbert, and Dougie Day followed Scottie Rose off of the train. Scottie walked a few blocks to a hotel. He stopped in front of a door at the room located the furthest from the office, and furthest from the road. He looked both ways and then rapped a syncopated sequence on the door.
Inside the room, Cyrus Findlay lay on one of the beds with the television remote control in his right hand. His left hand rested next to a high-caliber revolver. Cyrus smiled at Benny Hill, who was chasing after a group of young women to the tune of “Yakety Sax”. At the sound of the first knock, he muted the tellie and bolted to his feet with the revolver pointed at the door.
Three knocks into the sequence that he and Scottie had rehearsed, Cyrus relaxed. He put his mouth to the gap between the door and its frame.
“A monkey walks into a bar,” Cyrus whispered.
“Cueball,” was the reply.
Cyrus removed the security chain from the door and opened it.
“Where in the bloody hell have you been?” Cyrus seethed.
“I told you where I was going,” Scottie said, pushing past Cyrus.
“Yeah, to look in on your Mum. That’s why you’ve been gone for eight hours and smell like a pub toilet,” Cyrus said.
“When did you turn into such a girl scout, Cyrus?” Scottie asked.
“Did you forget that we’re in business with a psychopath?” Cyrus said. He placed the gun down on the desk.
“I could use a drink,” Scottie said. “Do you have anything to drink?”
“You’d better get a grip on yourself, Scottie,” Cyrus said, shaking his finger in Scottie’s face. “Wellmore didn’t call us here to get knackered. There has to be somethin’ else going on.”
Scottie plopped into a chair. He stretched his arms and yawned.
“More than likely he snapped and wasted those two, and now he needs us to dump the bodies,” Scottie said. “I would rather be sufficiently bombed to do that kind of business.”
“We’re not being paid to guess what Wellmore’s up to,” Cyrus said. He stepped to the window and peeked out of the curtain. “What happens if he calls and I don’t know where you are? We’re right here within spittin’ distance to him—he might just turn us into crab bait. You ever think of that?”
“Pfftt!” Scottie tossed a hand into the air. “The likes of Wellmore don’t get his dainty little hands dirty, Cy. That’s why he’s payin’ us in the first place.”
“Don’t take much more than one dainty little finger to pull a trigger, Scottie,” Cyrus said. “And I believe he’s the kind that could blow your brains against the wall—cut out your tongue, fry it up and eat it, and then lay down for a nap.”
Scottie stared silently at his friends back until Cyrus let go of the curtain and turned around.
“What?” Cyrus said.
“You always said this was a good thing for us,” Scottie said. “You were the one who told him we would work for him. I didn’t want nothin’ to do with the crazy man. You said it would be okay, and now you’re talkin’ like Wellmore is the Devil himself.”
“Honest?” Cyrus said, unable to look Scottie in the eye. “I never thought it would go this far. He nicked those people all by himself—used some kind of drug, I’m sure. We got cash money and five months of layin’ up on an island—and we haven’t had to do anything. Not yet.
“We had nothin’, Scottie—and our lives were going nowhere, fast. Some days we couldn’t even eat. And Wellmore knew that.”
Bruiser and Arabella saw movement on the opposite side of the room.
Dougie Day was fascinated with the huge revolver on the table. He had his hand on it.
“What in the—?” Arabella whispered.
“What do you think you’re doin’, Dougie?” Bruiser asked. He raised a hand toward Dougie—and the gun.
“I haven’t….I haven’t touched one since…,” Dougie said quietly. He looked like he was in a trance. “I got in my truck—the night after I got my new pool stick—it cost me a weeks’ pay. Something told me to go back to the house and get my pistol. But I talked myself out of it. Why should I need it, right? I was only gonna play some pool. I remembered that—later. While I was dying—layin’ in that ditch.”
Bruiser held up both hands.
“We’ll find you a gun, Dougie. As soon as we’re out of here. I promise. A really fine one. Please, Dougie…”
Dougie moved as if he had not heard anything that Bruiser said. His open right hand closed around the pistol grip. The gun moved slightly. Dougie moved his left hand to assist his right. The pistol rocked slightly and slowly rose from the bedside table. Dougie’s eyes glassed over and a grin spread across his face. When the gun was completely off of the table, the weight of the heavy barrel swung toward the floor. Dougie brought up his left hand to help, but this only caused his right hand to lose its grip. He juggled the gun between his hands until the disaster happened.
BOOM!
The explosion from the high-caliber pistol reverberated off of the walls. The bullet flew between Cyrus and Scottie, easily piercing the door as well as the windshield of a commercial van in the parking lot. The vehicle’s alarm began to wail.
Cyrus and Scottie looked at each other for a split second, and then they did the only that that came to mind.
They ran.
Arabella, Bruiser, Dougie, and Delbert followed them.
“We should take the gun,” Delbert said.
“What?” Arabella screamed. “We have to follow them!�
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“No, Elvis Junior is right,” Bruiser said. “Get the gun, Dougie. Put it in a pillow case if you have to.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Arabella said. “We have to go now!”
Dougie already had the gun—in a pillowcase.
Bruiser took Arabella by the arm and pulled her along. “If that gun sends these two to jail, we might never learn a thing. You heard them. This Wellmore sounds like a stark-raving lunatic killer.”
The ghosts chased Cyrus and Scottie across parking lots, vacant lots, and sidewalks. The pace fell off quickly. The two men were not in the best physical shape.
“That was good thinking, Delbert,” Arabella said.
Delbert blushed and looked uncomfortable.
“Thank—”
“I know,” Arabella said. “Thank you. Thank you very much.”
Bruiser and Dougie laughed.
Delbert scowled.
“Don’t go thinkin’ you can just use my material any time you want. I am—”
“We know,” Bruiser said. “You are the King!”
Bruiser, Arabella, and Dougie stopped long enough to bow before Delbert in an exaggerated fashion.
“Sorry, Delbert,” Bruiser said softly. “We didn’t mean to cause any T-R-O-U-B-L-E!”
Bruiser kept a straight face for a moment, but he couldn’t stop himself from cracking up. Dougie never allowed Bruiser to laugh alone, so he laughed as well. This made Dougie drop the pillowcase with the gun in it. It bounced loudly off of a steel storm drain and landed on a patch of grass. Dougie snatched up the pillow case and the four ghosts grew still and quiet.
Cyrus Findlay’s head snapped around at the sound. He and Scottie ducked into an alley and stopped. They bent over, gasping for breath.
“Ah,” Cyrus groaned. “We’re deep in it now, Scottie.”
“What in blazes happened?” Scottie asked, his hands on his knees.
Cyrus scowled and looked both ways up the alley. He walked to the sidewalk and looked both ways there.
“Show yourselves, you foul spirits!” Cyrus said through clenched teeth.
Bruiser pulled Dougie into the entryway of a nearby business.
“We have to hide the gun,” Bruiser said. “I think they heard it, and they’ll be able to see it. We need to ditch the pillowcase, too.”
Dougie waited until Cyrus and Scottie were looking in the other direction. He slipped the pistol from inside the pillowcase and almost dropped it again. He held the gun against his chest and ran.
Cyrus and Scottie turned the corner where the ghosts had been, in time to see the pillowcase settle to the ground against the door of a bakery.
Cyrus picked it up.
“What is that?” Scottie asked.
Cyrus walked back toward the street and looked down at the storm drain. Scottie joined him.
“Look!” Scottie yelled a muted scream. In the light of a street lamp, Cyrus and Scottie saw a pistol pass around the corner of a building. It floated above the ground.
The men looked at each other.
“Wh…what’s happening, Cyrus?” Scottie whispered.
“What have we been up against ever since the night we walked into that castle, Scottie?”
“I still don’t believe—”
Cyrus slapped Scottie with his open hand.
“Look, you imbecile,” Cyrus leaned in toward his long-time companion. “We’ve done little for the last ten years but try to stay sauced from dusk to dawn. We saw what we saw, that night at the McIntyre place—and now we’re bound to the Devil for it. That gun didn’t go off by itself. The noise we heard was that gun bouncing off of that storm drain right there. What we just saw, was that gun being carried away—
“By a ghost.”
“Why would they have a pillowcase?” Scottie asked. “Oh, wait a minute. Fingerprints.” Scottie said the word slowly, as if he had realized an important clue.
“Ghosts don’t have fingerprints!” Cyrus said.
“If a ghost can pick up a gun, then he uses his fingers, right?” Scottie said.
“Yeah, I guess that’s right,” Cyrus said. “But you can’t arrest a ghost. Even if you can match his fingerprints.”
“But your fingerprints are on it, Cyrus,” Scottie said.
Cyrus turned and ran back in the direction they had come from. Scottie ran after him. Half-way down the alley, they jumped behind a trash bin just in time to avoid the sweep of a spotlight. Cyrus saw the heads of two policemen inside of the slow-moving car.
Cyrus and Scottie waited two minutes before they moved.
“We have to get that gun back,” Cyrus said. “They’re going to find the bullet.”
“Don’t worry, Cy. They don’t know who we are,” Scottie said.
Cyrus swallowed hard.
“It would be better if they had our real names, Scottie,” Cyrus said.
“What?” Scottie said. “That’s crazy.”
“Oh, yeah?” Cyrus said. “When they run those IDs and find out that those men don’t exist, they’re gonna think they got Jack the Ripper on the run.”
“But I got no criminal record,” Scottie said. “I’ve never been printed.”
“I never have either,” Cyrus said.
“Well, we’re in the clear, then,” Scottie said.
“Wellmore gave me that gun, Scottie,” Cyrus said. “Who knows how many people he might have killed with it? And his prints will be on that gun. Who knows what else the crazy git has done? And we’re linked to him, now.”
“Blessed Mother of Mercy,” Scottie whispered. “If the cops get that gun, they’ll have Wellmore, and Wellmore will know that it’s our fault. We have to find that gun.”
Cyrus squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced.
“But first, we have to go talk to Wellmore,” he said. “Ah, no, Scottie.”
Scottie had soiled himself.
Seventeen
Sebastian Wellmore
Wellmore Village, Scotland
Cyrus and Scottie ran until their legs and lungs forced them to stop. The sat down hard on a park bench, under a burned-out lamp. They took a few deep breaths before the cell phone in Cyrus’s pocket started ringing. Cyrus wrestled with his coat trying to get to the phone. Scottie held his breath and clutched at his heart.
“Yeah, Boss,” Cyrus said into the phone. He listened.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Wellmore, but I don’t think we can wait. Our cover is blown.” He jerked the phone away from his ear. Wellmore was screaming.
“Uh, that means that we were in this hotel, and my gun went off.”
More screaming.
“Look, Boss,” Cyrus said. “I didn’t do it. Scottie didn’t do it. The gun was layin’ on the table while Scottie and me were talking, and the next thing you know—Boom! A bullet goes flying right by our heads.”
Scottie watched Cyrus squint and pull away from the phone. Wellmore was yelling.
“Okay,” Cyrus said. “One hour.”
Cyrus ended the call. “He’ll call back in an hour, he says.”
Sebastian Wellmore stared at the woman who was standing in his doorway.
“What do you want?”
“I don’t want nothin’. Not anymore. I quit.”
The woman stepped into the room and dropped her Wellmore Castle badge and a keyring onto Sebastian’s desk.
“What is the problem, Mildred?” Sebastian asked. He tried to focus and contain the rage that his conversation with Cyrus Findlay had generated.
“I’m not deaf, you know,” Mildred said. “Yer not payin’ me enough to wait around until it’s my turn to be yelled at like that. I have a little pride left, Mr. Wellmore, even though I’ve just about lost it here. I’ve tried to remain a serious student of history while entertaining your guests, but you would rather provide them with a carnival. I paid my own way for an education in history, but that doesn’t seem to interest you. I’ve been little more than the Pied Piper in a ‘Haunted House’, and I’ve had quite enough of
it.”
Sebastian stood. “Mildred, you can’t—”
“Don’t tell me that I can’t quit,” Mildred said with a wave of her hand as she turned to leave. “I just did.”
Sebastian bit his lip. He looked down at his desk—and at his letter opener. His letter opener was actually a dagger, bought at a seedy little shop in an even seedier neighborhood. He purchased it at a high price—mindful that he was making a friend of the shopkeeper. He went on to use that same relationship to acquire firearms. Sebastian considered the pistol in his top drawer. His fingers flinched as if they had a mind of their own. He took a deep breath and sat down. He had killed before, but he knew that he could not leave a trail of bodies or missing persons every time that he got angry.
Let the wench walk, he thought. Mildred was gone.
Sebastian reached into a drawer; the drawer below the one that held the gun. He took out his ledger.
Sebastian compared the current income of the Castle Wellmore estate with the monthly expenditures. The business operated with eighteen months of losses, with the exception of two consecutive months in the black. That was the two months during which Holly McIntyre was in his mother’s employ.
Seven months ago, Sebastian had begun altering his mother’s ledger entries. He leaned closer and squinted at these changes. He assumed that his mother had discovered his tampering with the records. This probably led to her spying on him, though he had gone to great lengths to cover his tracks. His expensive clothes and shoes were recorded in the ledger as business expenses required by his position as host and manager of Wellmore Castle. These purchases were listed under “petty cash” withdrawals, and there were no receipts. These entries were made for Maggie Wellmore’s benefit.
The clothes had come from a shop several towns away—a shop that Sebastian broke into and looted. The petty cash had gone toward modifications to the dungeon, as well as keeping Findlay and Rose out of reach and on retainer. He spent even more cash on food for his captives.