The Ghosts of Landover Mystery Series Box Set

by Etta Faire

  She tapped at the photo. “Bobby said this guy here, the tall one with the suspenders, was probably his great uncle, Boyd. Weird, huh? Our distant relatives knew each other.”

  “Do you know the names of anyone else in the photo?” I said, mostly to Feldman. I’d asked him to come with me, but only if he could ride along without making me feel like I was going to die in the process. So I wasn’t exactly sure he was here.

  “Aside from the man I know was my grandfather, Terry Winehouse, nope. And he died a long time before I was even born. This is my dad’s side of the family so you’d have to ask him when he gets home, and I’m not sure he’d be much help anyway. He was the youngest of nine kids.”

  Feldman appeared beside me, scowling. “How nice. My brother had such a big, happy family. Two wives and nine kids. Must’ve been wonderful to live long enough to spread love around like that.”

  I didn’t acknowledge the bitter ghost even though I was happy he was here.

  Shelby was still going on about how old these photos were, and how her dad hadn’t been born until the late 50s.

  I turned the page and recognized Chez Louie instantly. The old pharmacy had looked a little like a Cracker Barrel then too. A group of about eight people stood in the snow in front of it.

  “That was the night of my murder,” Feldman said, and I almost dropped my phone because I couldn’t get the camera app on fast enough.

  I peeled back the scrapbook’s plastic protective coating and snapped a couple photos of the page.

  Feldman turned his head to the side, like he was studying it in an almost human way. “I’m not in this photo. Everybody wanted to be in it, so Terrance and I took turns with the camera. He obviously only kept the photo with him and the gang. But this is that weekend. One of these people in this photo did me in.”

  Feldman ran a ghostly finger along the three women and five men in the black-and-white photo. “My good friends, these ones. Slicing my throat. No one coming forward to report the crime or give any information about it.”

  “Sorry,” I said then kicked myself for talking to an entity only I could see.

  Shelby stopped talking, and looked around. “Sorry about what?”

  “That I’m coming over here, intruding on your family, for my book. I know this is a hard time.”

  “It’s okay. It’s good to talk about something else,” Shelby replied.

  I turned the page and took as many photos of the speakeasy and the people involved that weekend as I could. “There’s Feldman Winehouse,” I said. “Your grandfather’s brother. He’s the ghost I’m featuring in the book.”

  Shelby nodded.

  “I’d do anything for my brother,” Feldman said, pointing to a photo of him and Terry standing arm in arm.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Terry was always so jealous of me, though. He thought our mom liked me best. And she did. It was true. Feldman was her maiden name, so she kind of thought of me as special.” He paused, looking down at the photo book. “That’s not true, actually. The truth is, my mother was a gambler. It’s where I get it from. Her folks, the Feldmans, were a big banking family with a lot of money. My father had nothing. So when my mother married my father, they cut her off. Naming me Feldman was her way of trying to get them to like us. Sometimes, you lose when you gamble. And your kid is stuck with a weird name.”

  “Feldman is an unusual name. Do you know how he got it?” I asked Shelby.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Shelby chuckle-sighed. “I didn’t even know he had a brother.”

  Mrs. Winehouse yelled out from the kitchen. “I think it was Grandpa Terry’s mother’s maiden name or something like that. Some of the Feldmans still live ‘round here.”

  Feldman’s story was checking out all over the place.

  “Grandpa Terry,” Feldman said, the name crawling off his tongue. “I sold my part of that bar to help Grandpa Terry get a leg up in life, change his path…”

  “It looks like it worked,” I said, motioning around. Shelby sat forward, and I checked the pictures on my phone like I’d been talking about that. “Let me try again, though, just to make sure,” I said, clicking another photo. “Oh yeah, it worked.”

  Feldman went on. “Yeah, he got a leg up, all right. I can’t say I cared for the way I got thanked for it. It was a real pain in the neck, actually.”

  I wanted to ask him about that. From the brief research I’d done, which mostly consisted of looking through old, gruesome Yahoo Answer pages, having your throat cut was not an easy way to go out. The victims usually didn’t die immediately and had time to scream and flail around. Feldman must have seen something before he died.

  But Shelby was there, turning pages. And I could see the photo album pretty much skipped right to Terry’s first wedding after the speakeasy. So I thanked her and her family for their hospitality and headed out to work with my new nude lipstick.

  Potter Grove is the kind of town where everybody knows what kind of car everybody else drives, down to their license plate numbers and cutesy cat decals, so they can keep tabs on each other around town.

  And I was no different. After work that day, I checked for Shelby’s Cadillac as soon as I pulled into the parking lot that the Spoony River shared with the barbershop, relieved to see it was there.

  But I was careful to make sure no one else saw my car there. They’d wonder why I was at the barbershop, and I didn’t want to have to explain that I was spying on George. I circled the parking lot, checking the other cars to see if any busybodies were here before finding the most obscure spot at the back of the lot.

  These were the kinds of problems I never had in Indianapolis. Something to be said for the obscurity that a big city gives you.

  It was 6:30, and old George was just turning the open sign to closed. Band-aids dotted his grayish face from yesterday’s bird attack. I darted around back and waited until he was done taking the trash out to the dumpster before heading over to the back door to listen in.

  Feldman appeared by my side. I’d forgotten he was tagging along today. “Look who the real crook is around here,” he said. “You casing this place?”

  I shushed him even though I was the only one who could hear the ghost.

  I needed all my senses to listen in.

  A cold breeze blew by me and I zipped my jacket up, looking around before casually cupping my hand over my ear and placing it against the window. Years of grime coated my hand but I tried not to think about it.

  I didn’t hear anything at first. Maybe I was being crazy thinking a bird meeting was about to take place at a barbershop. Or, more likely, maybe the meeting was being held in the front of the barbershop while I was waiting in the back.

  I took a step back, just about to run to the front door when I heard something.

  Old George’s voice was shaky and low. “I already told you I’m not caving,” he said, or something close to that. I put my ear back on the cold, dirty window so I could hear better. “Last time they tried a coup, it backfired. Backfired in the worst way. People died.”

  “People were supposed to die,” a woman’s voice said, almost bored. It was calm and no-nonsense with a familiar crispness to it that I couldn’t place. “Please tell me you know that’s generally how a coup works. A violent overthrow of a system…”

  “I’m not a violent person,” George insisted.

  “No one here enjoys violence,” a male voice chimed in. “But we’ve tried things the non-violent way. We can’t keep hiding forever, living in fear. We believe the sparrow is here now.”

  The woman’s voice took over again. “You know better than anyone. It’s not the only sign that it’s time to take sides,” she said. She sounded an awful lot like Delilah Scott, the 90-year-old woman who lived near the Purple Pony, but that would have been impossible. She went on. “Just know, there are consequences for choosing wrong this time.”

  “What? Are you and your thugs going to peck my head open like you did the others sixty
years ago?” George replied.

  “That wasn’t me. But, it’s me now. It’s me today. We know you’re friendly with those… beasts. We’ve all seen it. We can only guess how friendly, though.”

  She paused for George to answer. He didn’t.

  “There’s a saying that applies here. You’re either with us or against us. The bears have already let us know they’re getting ready. What are we going to do? Back down again? Pretend we don’t notice? You should join us. Take a stand. Help us find those bears.”

  I saw Feldman shaking his head out of the corner of my eye. “Interesting. You said there were bear skins staked somewhere?”

  I nodded. “Yes,” I pointed to the fence behind us that separated the back of the strip mall to the main road. “Right back there. What does it mean?”

  He shrugged. “How should I know? I’m not a shifter. My bar catered to both the bears and the birds, though. And, let me tell ya, they did not always get along. I think the skins are a sign the bears are about to weed out their sympathizers or they’ve started. I forget which. It’s a warning and a sign. Shows they’re getting ready for war.”

  “They kill their own?” I bit my lip, thinking about Bobby and his brothers.

  “All shifters do. You either go along with the clan or you leave, one way or another.”

  It hit me, and I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t thought this through earlier. “So, George is a shifter? A bird shifter?”

  Feldman looked at me sideways, like maybe I wasn’t as smart as he thought. “One way to find out for sure.” He hovered through the door, leaving me there, staring at peeling white paint and a dirty window. Sometimes I forget that ghosts can go through walls.

  The chain on the inside unlatched and the knob turned.

  “What the…” someone inside said.

  The door flung open, but it was too dark to see anything. Before I could ask Feldman to find a light switch, the sound of large birds flapping crazily suddenly filled the room, shaking the walls like the kind of thunder that rumbles foundations and sends kids running to their parents’ rooms. There must’ve been hundreds of birds trapped in there somewhere or it sounded like it. I threw myself against the wall, mostly in an attempt to move out of the birds’ way as the sound grew louder around me.

  I covered my head, making sure to protect my eyes, but just when I expected to feel the searing pain of skull-crushing bird pecks, the noises stopped. And everything went silent.

  It all happened so fast that it took me a second to realize I was safe.

  “George?” I asked, taking a deep breath as I called into the darkness.

  The lights flicked on, and I saw him, leaning against the backroom of his barbershop.

  “Are you okay?” I asked. “It sounded like the birds were back.”

  “Birds? What are you talking about? I was taking a nap.”

  I looked around while the man lied. I’d never been back here before. It was just a break room with a microwave, refrigerator, and coffee pot. But it didn’t smell like food. It smelled like hair tonic mixed with a bird sanctuary.

  “Sorry, Carly Mae,” he said with a pronounced yawn. “Like I said, I just woke up. Everything okay? How on earth did you get in here?”

  He studied me as I studied him. “Oh, I came by to make sure you were okay from yesterday’s bird attack. I knocked but you didn’t answer, and the door swung open on its own. You must’ve left the back door ajar.”

  I could tell by his expression he believed me about as much as I believed him.

  But I was starting to trust my new client. In the car on the way home, I thanked him for his help at George’s. “We’ll do the channeling tonight,” I told him, almost instantly kicking myself for deciding not to wait for the sapentia formula.

  Chapter 9

  Feldman’s Story

  Jackson hovered by my side, arms crossed, watching as Feldman and I looked over the photos I’d printed out from Shelby’s album that were spread across the dining room table.

  “These people were your best friends, huh? The ones who slit your throat and wiped away the evidence,” Jackson said, in an almost taunting tone. “Makes you wonder who your worst enemies were.”

  Feldman glared at my ex like he wanted to kill him and I gave the man a similar look. It was just like Jackson to do something stupid like piss off the already-angry ghost I was about to channel with tonight. Jackson didn’t know the part where I was about to channel with Feldman, though.

  Feldman hover-paced the floor beside me. “I’ve thought about that myself many times. If they were my friends, why didn’t they report the crime,” he said. He was calmer than I thought he’d be. “And the only logical reason I can come up with is that most the people in that photo were pretty prominent in the community. They had a lot at stake and couldn’t afford to get caught gambling and drinking at an illegal joint where a murder took place. They’d have been done for it. A doctor, a rich socialite, a couple of tradesmen, the sheriff…”

  “The sheriff? So you’re saying this could’ve been a cover up on a huge level.” It felt a lot like the boater’s “accident” again, except I got the distinct impression the victim was hardly as innocent this time. “I’m going to need you to tell me exactly who’s who in this photo.”

  I grabbed my pencil and scribbled as fast as I could into the pages of my notebook, putting little notes about the looks of the people in the photo.

  Feldman pointed to a tall, clean shaven man with sunken cheeks and a sleek combover similar to Hitler’s. “That’s Richie Mulch, sheriff of Landover.”

  He was the one quoted in the article, commenting about the lack of fingerprints at the murder site. I vowed to look him up more as soon as possible.

  “My best friend, Doc Yelman,” Feldman continued, pointing to a short dark-haired guy next to the sheriff. “He’s the guy I sold my part of the bar to. We made a lot of deals together. Mostly, he wrote the prescriptions and I filled them at the pharmacy.”

  “But they were really just alcohol,” I asked.

  “Or something equally as medicinal.”

  “Were you cheating him?”

  “Everybody cheats a little,” he replied, moving onto the next person in the photo. “Including Doc.” He pointed to a woman in a fur jacket. Doc’s hand was on her shoulder and she was laughing. “Doc had a wife, but that ain’t her. Everybody’s got a little something going on the side.”

  “Did you?”

  “Everybody.” He paused. “Nothing serious. Just fun.”

  I remembered reading The Great Gatsby in my college freshman class at Landover University. It did seem like most people in that era had fairly open relationships, like the original free-love generation.

  Feldman went on, pointing out the other people in the photo and I took notes on as much as I could. I’d already written about Richie, Doc, and Terry, so the rest of my notes looked something like this:

  Drew: Cute brunette, late 20s. Feldman’s girlfriend of almost 10 years. Seamstress.

  Blanche: Unknown age, blonde. This is the girl Doc brought. Feldman doesn’t know much about her.

  Flo: Terrance’s girlfriend, early 20s, blonde. The rich and spoiled socialite. A Donovan.

  Boyd: (Bobby’s relative), large man with overalls and a beard. A farmer.

  Chance: Tall, handsome guy in the photo. Feldman says he was the “pigeon” Doc brought so they could all make money. Feldman thinks he might have worked as a handyman for Doc and was probably romantically involved with Doc’s wife.

  I turned to a fresh page of my notebook, my hand already tired from writing longhand. “Tell me what you remember about the murder.”

  He sat back in the chair and looked up at the ceiling. “That’s the part that’s still a little fuzzy. It was the end of the night. Everyone had gone to bed, I think. We were snowed in, I told you that, right? But I found everyone places to sleep. Blankets, pillows, the whole shebang. I made sure everyone was all nice and cozy. And how did they repay me
for my hospitality?”

  He took a minute to think about that, the betrayal of his friends. Not just the one who murdered him, but everyone else for cleaning it up and never even helping with the investigation.

  He continued. “Before I went to bed, I came back into the bar where the poker table was still set up, just to clean up a little before I headed off. And that crazy piggy bank was sitting right smack in the middle of the table again.”

  “What crazy piggy bank?”

  “Ah, I didn’t tell you about that, huh?” he said, looking at the ceiling again like he expected the memories to pour into his head if he looked long enough. “Nobody would admit where it came from, but somebody sent me this ugly-as-hell cast iron bank in the mail about a week before the party. It was crazy and heavy, looked like a horse.”

  “And you had no idea where it came from?” Jackson asked, voice skeptical.

  Feldman shook his head. “No, and it drove me nuts all night. What did it mean? Who sent it? It kept showing up in odd places all night. Everyone thought it was hilarious.”

  I scribbled everything into my notes and checked the photos for a horse bank. I didn’t see anything.

  “That creepy thing was on the poker table as I was heading off to bed. That’s when I noticed it had something sticking out of the little hole on its neck. You know, the hole for putting the coins in? So, I sat down to get a better look. It was pretty stuck in there, but I was able to dig it out with my pinkie. It was a string or something with a long thin paper attached. It said: You gamble. You lose.”

  I think I may have gasped.

  “That’s all I remember. Somebody grabbed my chin and yanked my head back. Before I could even struggle…”

  “Okay,” I said, stopping him. I would live the rest of the gory details in real time soon enough. It was better that I didn’t know too much ahead of time. “You never figured out what the note meant, though?”