High Court (Cid Garrett P.I. Book 2)

by Alexie Aaron

  Jesse continued to take pictures after Cid had lowered the camera. He followed a mass of darkness until it faded into time. He stopped, walked over to Cid, and said, “That was horrible. I couldn’t get a look at the shooter. All the camera picked up was a black smoke.”

  “Shooters. I’m convinced there were two or more of them. This family was slaughtered,” Cid said. “I think the reason we can’t see the shooters is because Mrs. Bautista’s spirit can’t remember, or didn’t see, who killed her and her children. It’s her that’s generating the energy to show anyone who happens by what happened to her family. She wants answers, and her impatience is causing her to be violent. I think it’s time for a little research. If she is killing men, it’s because she’s convinced the murderers were male.”

  Jesse handed him the borrowed camera. Cid handed it back. “Show me to my quarters, and I’ll show you how to download the stills you caught.”

  “I take it this ghost hunt isn’t just going to be a solo Superman gig?”

  “Oh no. If I’m going to be able to get a handle on this, without the help of PEEPs, I will need you, Kiki, and, perhaps, the fair Faye helping.”

  A large hand fell upon Cid’s back. He nearly dropped the expensive video camera. A familiar hearty laugh eased the shock he was feeling.

  “How about me? Can I get in on this or have you guys put me in the corner already?” Wayne asked.

  Cid turned around. “I’m surprised to see you here… I mean, I know you’re on the job but…”

  “So, I got my brains rattled a bit,” Wayne said. “Everyone’s been treating me like a fragile flower. I’m not a flower. I’m the bulldog that pees on the flower,” he said, looking directly at Jesse.

  Jesse hunched his shoulders. “Just following orders. Kiki wants you up and running. Your team is essential to the timeliness of this project.”

  “The boss is always afraid of falling behind,” Walrus said.

  “Her bonus must be a big one if she’s willing to work around a man-killing ghost,” Cid said.

  “Wait a moment,” Wayne said. “Did you say man-killer?”

  “I heard from a reliable source that a couple of men have lost their lives here. When and who hasn’t been confirmed yet. But we aren’t dealing with a normal ghost. This one has decided to pull her power from the darkness to hunt down the killers of her family.”

  “You know, not all of them died,” Jesse said. “Two got away. They don’t live around here, so we need to track them down. Maybe they can help. I have a feeling, once the story is told and the perpetrators are brought to justice, we can get back to work on the reception building and laundry.”

  Cid was impressed. The Jesse that he had worked a dozen jobs with normally didn’t want to get involved. Could living with a ghost like Faye have matured the man?

  “I know a retired forensic guy,” Wayne started. “If we could distract Mama from the area long enough to dig out a bullet or two, he will at least be able to run it through to see if the handgun or rifle was ever used again.”

  “I like the way you think,” Cid said. “In the Paranormal Entity Exposure Partners, we usually have one person act as the leader. We alternate so the pressure, or more likely ego, doesn’t get too much for the individual. Would you like to run lead on this?” Cid asked Wayne.

  “Hell no, I’ll botch it up.”

  Cid turned to Jesse, “How about it?”

  “Nah, I’ll help, but I’m lousy with managing people. I let the Espinas walk all over me. Cid, you’re the lead. I’m at your disposal.”

  “It will take me a little time to get things going. I’ll be asking you guys a lot of questions. We’ll have to do it on our own time unless we get Kiki’s okay.”

  “She’ll come around,” Wayne said. “I’ve been working with her since she shed her braces. As long as she thinks it’s her idea, then she’ll let us run with it. In the meantime, we’ll have to do it on our own and cover for each other. Deal?” Wayne asked, holding out his hand.

  “Deal,” Cid said, shaking it. They looked at Jesse, and each took a turn at shaking the other’s hand.

  “Well, I have twenty minutes left of my lunch break to get you sorted,” Jesse said. “Kiki will wait on no man,” he warned.

  “No matter how handsome we are,” added Wayne, smoothing his Sam-Elliott-inspired mustache.

  Stepner was a quaint mid-sized town located in the valley east of the motel. It reminded Faye of the kind of town jigsaw puzzle manufactures used. The autumnal winds had pulled most of the color from the trees, but a few vibrant, potted mums seemed to be holding on. Brilliant yellows and oranges decorated the fronts of the Main Street stores.

  Faye had no interest in retail. Her objective was the Stepner Public Library. It used to be a courthouse. As she watched the two spirits that drifted in the wind from where a scaffolding would have stood a hundred years past, Faye guessed it had also served as a jailhouse for those awaiting execution.

  Faye watched as the librarian, a perky, little, round, middle-aged woman - who wore a badge announcing her name was Margie, and could she be of service - locked the front door. The library times were posted on the door. Noon to one-thirty, the library was closed Monday through Friday. Saturday, it was open all day. Faye assumed, on Saturday, volunteers watched the place while Margie had her lunch. Sunday, it was closed.

  Faye moved over to the young adult fiction section. To her joy, a copy Anne of Green Gables remained. She picked up the book and settled at one of the old wood tables to read. She read for a while, caught up with Anne’s adjustments to living on the isle. Faye stopped and thought about how many adjustments she’d had to make. First was the emergence from the prison of the deep well at Hidden Meadow. The next was to the isolated woodland were Jesse was building his house. And now she’d found herself in Stepner. Here, she stayed near Jesse in the haunted motel, the townies referred to as High Court.

  Was she an orphan like Anne? Or did she have parents and siblings? If so, why did no one try to look for her? Maybe there was a big blowup between her and her parents. And if so, what could have caused it?

  The minute hand of the large library clock fell into place, reminding Faye that her private time there was limited. She would have to contemplate her forgotten past later.

  Calvin looked up at the motor court and liked what he saw. The reception building still was an eyesore, but the cabins and the line of connected rooms were beginning to resemble the artists’ retreat he envisioned. In his lifetime, Calvin had tried his hand at the various mediums of the art world but soon found that his eye for art far exceeded his talent. He started off his career by buying small and searching for the right patrons. He convinced them so-and-so was just about to burst onto the scene and that it would behoove the individual to take a chance on the up-and-coming artist and invest in the artwork. And buy they did, many times successfully selling the work at a large profit when the artist was recognized by the critics. Calvin became known as the go-to guy when it came to an art investment.

  Calvin had been married twice. It wasn’t that Debra and Mary weren’t good women or they didn’t love him; it was that his love of art far outweighed the love he would apportion to his brides. Debra and he parted amicably, but Mary… Well, Mary took his inattention hard. She had issues, which she spoke to a very expensive therapist about on Calvin’s dime.

  Calvin liked the finishing carpenter Kiki chose. He liked the young man’s straightforwardness and his reputation was good. He’d had Cid researched. He came from a good Kansan family. Cid had worked construction, learning his trade when the housing boom needed workers so badly that they took on men and women with no experience and taught them the trade. Cid evidently pleased his supervisors, and because of this, he had no trouble finding work as long as there was work to be found. During the housing crash, Cid moved to northern Illinois with his friend Theodore Martin, a man Calvin would love to meet. Cid’s friend took him in and found him work with his paranormal investigation gr
oup. Soon, Cid not only fit in, but added an empirical perspective which elevated the group’s work so that Burt Hicks couldn’t say enough good things about him to the investigator Calvin had hired.

  “He’s got the kind of brain that can access memory more quickly than most of us. He works along with Ted at home on the inventions that he and Ted have jointly patented. They have invented some very useful, and some not so useful, products. Cid also designed and built not only the extension to the Martin farmhouse, but designed and supervised the building of the guest house, which housed an impressive library, guestrooms, and on the top floor, a very large aerie.”

  Kiki did well to hire him. Both Cid and Kiki understood the balance of man and nature, which was imperative in the art world. But more importantly, as a paranormal investigator, Cid would do his best to drive the negative force away from this project - doing it quietly, away from newspapers and gossips. Kiki had already failed him with the incident involving the large man she called Walrus. Calvin would not allow another failure. Whatever happened at that motor court needed to be found out, justice given to the victims and their survivors, and be filed in the archives of the Stepner Gazette, not on the front page.

  Cid drove his truck slowly around the two Airstreams that were offices for Kiki and the security team. Behind the building were three other habitable trailers plus Wayne’s fifth wheel. Jesse motioned for Cid to pull in beside the last of the trailers. Cid hopped out of the truck. “Who am I sharing this with?” he asked, reaching inside the back of the cab for his duffle.

  “It’s all yours. There are only five of us on this lot full-time. You, me, Wayne, and two security guys you’ll meet later. They’re retired army guys that have started a security business. Kiki wanted to give them a chance. I think they’re friends of her uncle.”

  “So, I have the last trailer because I’m the last one here?” Cid asked, inspecting the exterior. He examined the front of the trailer, and as he turned the corner, the ground fell away after four feet of weed-filled lawn. He looked down at the hundred-foot, tree-spiked drop into a rocky streambed and backed away from the edge quickly.

  “I figured that you wouldn’t mind the location. After all, you’re Superman; you can fly,” Jesse said and tossed the trailer keys to Cid before walking away.

  Cid set his duffle down and checked all the locking blocks on the wheels of the Airstream before he put a key in the door. He opened it up to find a neat little space with a tiny but serviceable kitchen. True to her word, Kiki had the place set up for Wi-Fi. He suspected, since she still had a relationship with Jake, the Wi-Fi would be first on her list.

  A slight tap on the door was followed by Jesse carrying in an armload of Cid’s equipment. Wayne was right behind him. Soon the three had Cid’s belongings stored away. Wayne confiscated Cid’s bag of cookies and raised an eyebrow when Cid started to object.

  “I have to check each one for illegal substances. Kiki made me safety engineer again.”

  “Safety engineer means…” Cid started and stopped. “I’ll just ask Mia to send more.”

  Wayne patted his stomach. “I better order me some larger pants.”

  “You mean Depends. You pissed your last pair,” Jesse mentioned.

  “There were several reasons for that. A full bladder, blood oozing out of the ground, and, well… you had to be there.”

  “I was, and I didn’t piss my pants.”

  “That’s cuz your wiener…”

  “Stop!” Cid interrupted. “Out. I have five minutes to freshen up before I’m due at Cabin 4.”

  The contractors left. Cid watched from the open door the two playfully push at each other. He heard Wayne complain, “Why did you have to tell him I pissed my pants?”

  “You were being a bully, stealing his cookies,” Jesse said, snatching the bag and digging out a handful before handing it back. “I don’t like bullies.”

  Cid shook his head and smiled. He knew that Mia had anticipated this and packed a Tupperware box full of her special cookies in his duffle. He opened the carton and ate one before changing into a fresh shirt. Kiki was not the type of boss to keep waiting.

  Chapter Four

  Cid walked beside Kiki as they headed for Cabin 4. It was a large cabin which could have been used for some larger families of traveling motorists. Sitting behind the long building of single rooms, which also held the office, the cabin was isolated, with only a series of broken slabs connecting it to the motel. Cid imagined that it could have been a nice cement walk, which would have had protected the travelers from the morning dew from what could have been a nice lawn. Instead, raspberry bushes had crept in, along with a few small trees grown from falling oaks, or squirrel-hidden acorns, making it a nightmare to navigate.

  “I’ve been interviewing local landscapers,” Kiki said. “I’m running into a few problems. Most of them want to dig everything up and start again, but Calvin wants to save the feeling of isolation for this cabin. Evidently, the artist he has in mind doesn’t mix well with his peer group. Before you ask, he wouldn’t divulge the name.”

  “It seems that Calvin respects privacy and can keep a secret,” Cid observed.

  “Yes. I’m sure he has a few secrets himself to protect. I wouldn’t ask too many questions,” Kiki warned. “He’ll offer any information he thinks you need to know.”

  “Like why he’s really investing all this money on this risky venture,” Jesse said from behind them.

  Kiki stopped and turned around. “Risky? Explain yourself, Scrub.”

  “The gallery only makes money in the summer. How is he going to support these artists?”

  “According to Jake, Calvin makes most of his money via auctions and uses the internet to lure in his potential clients from all over the world. Imagine having a stable of sought after artists at his beck and call,” Kiki said.

  “Have any of his checks bounced yet?” Cid asked.

  “No,” Kiki replied.

  “Then, it’s none of our business why he is doing this, only that we are getting paid to remodel these buildings into artist spaces,” Cid proclaimed.

  “Alright, I’ll give you that one,” Jesse said.

  Wayne was waiting for them in the building. He was discussing with a few of the local framers the process of dealing with load-bearing walls. “I’ve ordered the special beams we need. Until then, let’s work on taking out the other walls. Leave these three alone,” he said, indicating each wall with a pat of his hand followed by a spray of orange paint.

  Cid entered the space and looked around. “This area is much bigger inside than I thought. Where’s the furnace and hot water heater?”

  “Underneath in the cellar,” Wayne answered.

  “This cottage has a cellar?” Cid asked, puzzled.

  “It was probably originally a house on the property when the motel was built, and it was later rented out with the rest of the cabins,” Kiki commented.

  “It has a fieldstone foundation,” Jesse pointed out. “The access to the cellar is outside. Come, I’ll show you.”

  Cid looked at Kiki for permission. She nodded.

  Jesse took him outside and around back to an outer cellar hatch. The sloping doorway was covered by two heavy doors. Cid knocked on them. “These are steel? They can’t be original.”

  “You should have seen the lock on them. It took Wayne quite a while to cut it off. He ended up using a blowtorch.” Jesse carefully laid back the heavy doors and turned on his flashlight as he climbed down the stairs. “The stairs are metal, so we won’t have wood rot to deal with.”

  Cid stopped halfway down. “This is more of a fortress than a cellar.”

  “The cabin was built in the 1950s. It could be a Cold War fortification,” Jesse offered.

  “It smells of secrecy to me. Whoever owned this building reinforced this to act as a safe. If it were a civil defense shelter, the floor wouldn’t still be dirt,” Cid pointed out.

  “Huh, never thought of it that way. Come on, I’ll show
you the place,” Jesse said.

  Cid walked around the underground space, noting the long tables that had survived over the years. He had been in some old farmhouses where they had set squashes and apples on similar tables to store them for the winter, but why go to the trouble of coating them with varnish? The layers of dust couldn’t disguise that those tables were smooth. He took out his handkerchief and ran his hand over one. What were these tables really used for? He also noted that the tables were centered in the space instead of against the walls.

  “The furnace will need to be replaced as well as the hot water heater. Wayne’s got some on-demand heaters he’s worked with before on order. That space up there is going to be a challenge to regulate the temperature, but that’s not my problem,” Jesse said.

  “Your problem is the roof,” Cid said absentmindedly.

  “And our ghost problem. I’m in on that,” Jesse reminded Cid.

  Cid looked over at his friend. “You’ve changed. Or have you always been interested in the unknown, and I didn’t know it?”

  “It’s not that you haven’t been observant. I’ve just had time to think. That last house we did, combined with little Faye, really opened up my eyes.”

  Cid took a moment to carefully form his words before he spoke, “I have to admit, when I first started helping Ted out with PEEPs, I was blown away. The more we took on, the more I realized that not only are we not the only ones on this planet, but just how much the past influences the present. Things that happen to you as a kid make you behave in a certain way now.”