The Ghosts of Landover Mystery Series Box Set

by Etta Faire

  The cold hard water hit me like I’d been thrown onto cement. It whooshed around my ears, spilling into my lungs, making them burn. I spun around, down was up and up was down. I had no idea how to get to the surface. Darkness consumed my every sense and I knew my end was coming soon. Somehow, my body floated upward enough for me to get a sense of which way to swim. My thoughts were Gloria’s as I coughed my way above the water, surprised I was breathing, surprised they’d let me off the boat. I looked around for Nettie.

  “Nettie!” I yelled over the boys still screaming from the boat. I had no idea what they were saying. I could really only hear my own breathing now, panting hard along the surface of the lake.

  Nettie didn’t respond and my eyes were too swollen to see much. I swam a little farther out and yelled her name again, gulping in a huge mouth of what smelled like sewer water.

  “Gloria,” she said, her voice slurred and low. I swam toward it. Nettie’s beautiful Marilyn Monroe face was puffed out in odd places and already darkened with bruises. Her hair stuck to her head in matted, wet clumps, mascara streaming into the blood that dripped from her scalp. “I’m so sorry,” she said when I reached her.

  “It’s okay,” Gloria told her. “We’re alive. That’s the only thing that matters. We’re okay.”

  “We’re not okay.”

  “We’re gonna be. We can swim back to shore…”

  “I can’t swim that far.” She was crying now.

  “I can,” Gloria said. “And you can too. I’ll help you. We’ll take it one stroke at a time, got it? I won’t leave your side.”

  Nettie took a few strokes and stopped to cry again.

  “Float on your back when you get tired,” Gloria said, pulling herself onto her back. “Like this.”

  Nettie flopped over, coughing up water, gurgling. “We’re never going to make it.”

  “You just need to take your mind off of it. Remember that song your mom taught us when you fell off your bike in kindergarten? The one about never giving up?”

  Hysterical sobs came from Nettie’s direction. She slapped the water hard. “Stop it, Gloria. We’re going to die. I’m not singing about it.”

  The sound of a boat approaching caught Gloria's attention and she turned herself back over. “Look, I’m afraid too. But there are two boats now. I think one’s the police,” she said, with tearful joy in her voice.

  “Oh please let it be the police,” Nettie gurgled back, her head barely above the water.

  “It is! It’s the police.” With all the energy she had left, Gloria kicked above the surface, enough to scream and wave her arms about. “Somebody probably called about the screaming, and they came to investigate. We need to get their attention.”

  The engine cut out on both boats, and for a minute, it was quiet, still, calm. “They tried to kill us.” Gloria yelled and waved her hands around until a bright light shone right on her. “Over here! Save us! Please!”

  She blinked into the light. It stung her swollen eyes and she couldn’t really see. The sound of an engine turning on again filled the night, growing louder and louder, faster too. Gloria squinted against the light. It was headed right in the girls’ direction.

  “What are they doing? They’re going too fast.” The light got brighter. Gloria waved her arms around a little more frantically. “Stop!” she screamed, her voice high-pitched, desperate.

  She grabbed her cousin around the neck, and kicked as hard as she could with achy legs, trying to swim off to the side and avoid the boat. “It’s not sto…”

  Oddly, I heard it first. A loud cracking sound I knew was probably my head followed instantly by darkness.

  Chapter 9

  Sympathy Pains

  The hardest part was always dying. Over and over again. It was all I could think about when I snapped back to life in my living room, gasping like I was still under water.

  It never seemed logical that one second there was life and hope, and the next, there simply wasn’t anymore. A snap of a finger, a blink of an eye. And even though I always knew the moment was coming, it didn’t make it seem right. I wondered if that was how I was going to feel when my time came. Even though I tried to tell myself these channelings were preparing me for my own final moment, I knew they weren’t. It was never going to seem right.

  I got up, my face still stinging a little with the sympathy pains that came from living through someone else’s violent death. I staggered over to the credenza in the back, to my notebook where I would write everything I could remember while it was still fresh in my memory. I checked my face in the reflection of one of the silver bowls displayed along the back wall, fully expecting to see bloody swollen gashes.

  I was fine, even though fine was far from what I was feeling.

  I made myself remember everything I could — the people involved, the oddities of the night — even though I wanted to forget every last one of them. I had a job to do here.

  Myles Donovan was the one who’d beaten Gloria senseless, him and his dad, and his dad had thrown Gloria overboard. I knew from my research that Myles’s dad had died a long time ago, but Myles was still here. The 80-year-old powerhouse who owned much of Landover County. And that old man was going down.

  I scribbled as fast as my hands would go, trying to remember who else had been onboard, who the other kids had been, but once Gloria had been spotted at the “party,” things had gone ape, as she would say, and not in a good way. I wrote my questions out one after another, circling the biggest one I had. Why?

  Why were they dumping things over the side of the boat? Pouring beers out? There was definitely more to this story than the part I’d just lived through. And I was going to figure it out, and a way to connect it to Myles Donovan.

  My phone rang and I lost all concentration.

  Rosalie didn’t even let me say “hello.”

  “Where the hell have you been?” she yelled. “I’ve been trying to call you for more than a damn hour. You will never believe who came by my shop today, not to buy anything, of course. But to try to tell me you’d made an agreement with her to do another seance.”

  I didn’t answer her.

  “Satan,” she began in the overly dramatic tone she seemed to reserve for Paula Henkel moments. “Please, for the love of our friendship and everything decent and good in life, do not tell me Satan is spewing out truth.”

  “It’s true,” I said, looking through my cabinet for the ibuprofen, and some crackers. Something, anything to snack on. I was starving. “But admit it. We made a ton of money last time and we could sure use a ton of money right now. What’re you gonna do, cut my hours to less than nothing? But honestly, if you won’t do the seance with me, I’m doing it by myself because I need the money.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Dr. Dog said the Purple Pony’s not doing very well,” I added.

  “What’s it to him?” She spatted back.

  “That’s not exactly denying it.”

  I opened my ibuprofen and went to the sink for water, downing my pills. The water tasted good, like I was dying of thirst almost. I took another gulp and another, wiping the back of my mouth with the edge of my sweater. I leaned against the kitchen island, and looked outside. It was already dark. I must’ve been channeling for hours. “Okay, you think about it,” I finally said, sick of the awkward silence. “But I just lived that boater’s death in a channeling.”

  “Oh no,” she said, like I’d just told her I kicked a puppy on my way out from robbing an orphanage. “How long?”

  “What time is it?” I asked

  “Almost 9:15, and the fact you had to ask me that means you were channeling for way too long.”

  “Only about an hour,” I interrupted because I didn’t want her to worry, even though I was pretty sure it had been afternoon when I’d started.

  I rubbed my jaw and temples as I talked. “It was no accident. I know who did it. And they’re going down. Myles Donovan.”

  “And now, in addition
to crazy, you’ve gone and flipped your lid too.” Her voice rose beyond concern, bordering on freaking out. “I am about to turn 60. I have heard about that accident since I was a kid. The papers, the people, the whole town has the same story. What do you have except an old ghost’s memory that says otherwise? Because it seems to me you are forgetting the tread-cautiously part.”

  She was right. “I don’t have any evidence yet,” I admitted.

  “Is that what you’re hoping to do with this seance? Get another standing ovation? Not gonna happen with this one. Besides, Myles Donovan is gonna die soon anyway. He’s gotta be close to 80. No sense in stirring the pot.”

  I opened the cabinet and pulled out a large drinking glass, filled it all the way up with tap water, and chugged. “Just finish setting up the seance,” I said in between sips. “The truth about this accident is going to come out, so we might as well make money from it.”

  “So you’re saying you’re going to be foolhardy no matter what I say.”

  “Yep.”

  Rosalie didn’t say anything after that, and we sat in silence until I finally interrupted it. “I can’t care if there’s not enough evidence to convict anyone and I sure as hell don’t care if that old man dies before he’s convicted. His reputation, dead or alive, will suffer. Gloria and her cousin at least deserve that.”

  “I’m just wondering if I deserve it,” Rosalie said. “The last thing I need is Myles Donovan gunning for me.”

  I downed my water, remembering how skunky and rancid the lake had tasted, how it felt in my lungs. I couldn’t help but wonder just what kind of hot water I was about to land in by stirring this particular pot. I took a deep breath and reminded myself it had to be stirred.

  I knew I wouldn’t see Gloria again for a few days while she rested. It was hard on her to relive that night too. But I couldn’t wait to tell her how brave she’d been. She always seemed so timid and unsure of herself. She was the one who held Nettie together and figured out a plan. She was the one who’d tried to do the right thing all along. Her family deserved to know that about her too.

  I got off the phone with Rosalie, the details of the channeling still crawling through my head like worms in a garden, disgusting yet there for a purpose.

  The girls had obviously stumbled onto something they weren’t supposed to see, something Bill Donovan was involved in. And something he’d enlisted his teenage son and his friends to help him carry out.

  I knew the newspapers weren’t going to be very helpful on this one. Was there anything truthful printed there?

  One of the articles clearly said Mr. Donovan and Mr. Linder had been asleep below deck. That wasn’t true. I knew because I’d been there, hiding down below, until I was thrown overboard by one of the allegedly sleeping men, which also happened to be the only older man I saw that night.

  The police investigation. The newspaper. They all seemed to be going along with the same narrative the Donovans had created.

  I tried to think back to the channeling. Was it really the police boat that had run the girls over?

  I decided to pay the local boating shop a visit tomorrow to see what they could tell me. It was a long shot, but maybe they kept records from that time period that would indicate if Myles Donovan had taken his boat in for repairs.

  But then I remembered it was winter. Would anyone even be there?

  Chapter 10

  Making a Splash

  Before heading out the next day, I tried to call my mother again. But the woman who lectured nonstop about the common courtesies of answering phones and returning messages wasn’t picking up or returning my messages.

  I swallowed my worry, grabbed my purse, and headed down to the Knobby Creek Boating Company.

  There were several boating service companies on the lake now, but Knobby Creek seemed to be the oldest. It was also the creepiest. And it wasn’t just the rundown wooden warehouse that looked straight out of a slaughterhouse movie. I couldn’t get over the two weird statues of old fishermen in overalls that greeted customers on a bench by the front door. Because nothing says good service like stuffed people watching you.

  With flaky, orangish-green “skin,” these men hadn’t aged well either. Their chipped off noses were almost nonexistent and the old-fashioned gasoline attendant hats they wore sported logos that were so faded, the KC almost looked like rusted, severed baby legs. Or maybe the logo was supposed to look that way. It might have been an anchor, who knew?

  I took a photo of the men before trudging past them, noticing a bright red “open” sign.

  Was that for real?

  Sure enough, I swung the door open to a small souvenir shop that smelled like boarded-up motor oil mixed with Ben Gay.

  A thick older man with a bushy white mustache and an argyle sweater moseyed in from the back when he heard me come in. “Mornin’,” he said. His smile wasn’t customer-friendly, like you’d expect from a place with smiling dummies out front.

  Behind the man was a large chalkboard with the prices and services for boat rentals and storage fees. The store was also full of summer stuff not even on clearance yet: Long, one-piece swimsuits, inflatable inner tubes, water guns, along with some fishing gear, tackle, and brightly colored bait. Rosalie wasn’t the only one in Landover with delusions of a more prosperous season.

  “Surprised to see you open,” I said. He didn’t smile, didn’t elaborate. He just nodded slowly.

  “Something I can do you for?” he asked.

  “Information,” I replied then chuckled. I knew that was not what any business on the lake wanted to hear, especially not in winter. “How old’s this boating company?”

  “We opened April 3, 1944,” a shaky voice from behind me said, making me jump. I turned to see an old man who looked remarkably similar to the two out front. Only, this one was talking.

  He had to be in his 90s, thin and without many teeth, rocking in a chair by the only window. “I had just returned from the war…”

  “Dad, go back to your Popular Mechanics.”

  The old man searched his lap, resting his hand on the magnifying glass sitting on top of his magazine. After licking a shaky finger, he opened the magazine up.

  “What kind of information you looking for?” the younger of the two older men asked.

  “I want to know about the boating accident from 1957.”

  “Nineteen-fifty-seven. I would’ve been five at the time, so I cannot help you.” He motioned toward the older man. “And don’t even think ‘bout askin’ my dad. He’s senile and won’t remember.”

  I ignored him, mostly directing my attention to the supposedly senile man in the rocking chair pretending to read Popular Mechanics with a magnifying glass. “He seems fine to me. Do you remember Bill Donovan, sir? Or the boat wreck from 1957?”

  “We don’t keep records that old. And we don’t share stuff with… out-of-towners,” the younger man hollered for no reason.

  “Out-of-towner? I live here.”

  “I don’t know ya.”

  “Okay,” I said, turning back to the man in the rocker. “Maybe you remember something.”

  He looked up at the ceiling like he was trying. “Bill Donovan had a lot of fine boats. I worked on all of ‘em.”

  “I thought I told you to leave him alone,” his son snapped at me.

  I went to the rack of overpriced, floral swimsuits with humungous cups stitched into the lining. “Oh you have swimsuits,” I said, like it wasn’t the middle of winter and these were cute.

  “Knock yourself out,” the man replied, watching my every move. I checked my cellphone. I was going to have to leave for work soon, and this was going nowhere.

  Jackson appeared by my side and I was never more thankful to see him.

  “Oh my,” he said, looking around the store. “I’d forgotten how quaint this place was. And by quaint, of course I mean if the movie Deliverance had a gift shop. I made the mistake of coming in here once when I was in my twenties. I’m not much of a boating pe
rson, but I came in with a friend.”

  “You have friends?” I said, forgetting I was being watched. I quickly put my cell phone up to my ear and acted like I was on the phone with someone while I browsed. “Could you work your magic?” I said, to my phone.

  Jackson didn’t answer me. He was too busy turning his lip up at the long swimsuit I was holding against my body. “I hear it’s all the rage to look 40 pounds heavier and about 20 years older,” he said, which made me think seriously about buying it, just to have a swimsuit I could wear in the shower that my ex apparently hated. I looked at the price tag. $169.

  Ohmygod, these people were psychos.

  I laughed into my cellphone. “I just need you to work your magic, that’s all. You know,” I motioned around the store.

  “Cause a distraction,” he said. “That’s all I am to you now.”

  “Pretty much,” I replied.

  He rolled his eyes but went over to the back of the room, in the corner by the magazine racks. “This is actually a pleasure. When I came into this store more than 30 years ago, they wouldn’t serve me because I wasn’t dressed properly. Surprisingly discriminating for a place that sells plastic flip flops. My Italian sandals probably cost more than this entire shack …” He threw a magazine across the room. It smacked the back wall, knocking the decorative anchor down. “This same man called me a bum.”

  The guy looked up from the cash register. “What the… What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” I said. “But wow, that was freaky. Is this place haunted?”

  Another magazine flew across the room. This time, it went in the opposite direction and flew by the man’s reddening face.

  “Let it all out, rich boy,” I whispered into my phone. The whole magazine rack toppled over and the man in the argyle sweater stormed across the room to see what was going on. Quickly, I pulled one of the articles I’d printed at the library out of my purse, smoothed it out, and held it up for the old man in the rocking chair to see. I approached him while his son tried to control the cyclone of overpriced crap circling the store as my ex-husband went for the fishing stuff now.