Death of a Toy Soldier

by Barbara Early

  Chapter 16

  Half an hour later, we arrived at Kimmie Kaminski’s doorstep, armed with the oral history of the house—some eighty-plus years of it.

  Kimmie—wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan “Ghost Hunters Are My Rock Stars!”—opened the door. She introduced us to several young men: Chuck, Zack, and Spook (which I really hoped was a nickname), all members of her paranormal team. They were similarly dressed and generously tattooed and were in the process of setting up various electronic devices.

  Many of the boxes had been cleared away. One large box, perhaps from a refrigerator, was in the center of the room. The seams were sealed with duct tape and the inside lined with aluminum foil.

  “Never mind that,” Kimmie said. “Just a little experiment I’m working on.”

  Dad did a double take as he walked by.

  “Althena isn’t here yet.” Kimmie rubbed her hands together. “I’m excited about tonight. There’s this energy that something is going to happen.”

  “I feel it,” Chuck said. Or maybe it was Zack. They both were young men and wore black baseball caps pulled low over their scruffy faces. Spook was the only one who stood out, with his completely bald head and wide eyes.

  “In addition to whoever was in the house before,” Kimmie said, “it’s possible that Sy and Sully could be here now, too. Especially since Sully won’t be completely at rest. And Sy always wanted to know what spirits were in the house. He might stick around for those answers.”

  “Do you know the history of the house?” I asked.

  “Just bits and pieces,” she said. “Sy was a bit scattered near the end. Wait, do you know more?”

  “From the neighbors,” I said. “I gather this house has quite a history.”

  “We should document this,” Zack said. Or maybe it was Chuck.

  “Can we record you telling the story?” Kimmie asked.

  Dad put his hand up. “Not me. Camera shy.” Except I knew he was lying. “But Liz would be happy to.”

  “I . . . sure.” I was fitted with a microphone and posed in a threadbare armchair. Lights shone and cameras rolled. While all attention was on me, Dad wandered around the house, poking and prodding and looking around. Apparently I was his search warrant.

  “So what can you tell us about the history of the old DuPont house?” Kimmie asked, her voice taking on a journalistic timbre. “Is it true that old William DuPont died of malaria in the master bedroom?”

  “I don’t know about that,” I said. “From what I heard, the house was built by a Dr. Leonard DuPont, but of no clear relation to the industrialist millionaire.” I heard a quiet sigh but kept going. “According to local sources, Doctor DuPont used the home not only as his residence but also as his hospital and operating room.”

  A bright smile spread across Kimmie’s face. “So it’s possible that some of the patients died here as well.”

  Unless he was very good, I thought. But I bit back the snarky comment. “Several years passed before a regular office and hospital were set up, so yes, it’s likely that more than one patient died here.”

  “I wonder if we’ll hear from any of them tonight. Some residual moans, perhaps,” Kimmie said, and then she started talking to the walls. Loudly. “Are any of Doctor DuPont’s patients here? Did you die in this house of a disease people didn’t understand? Or did you have an operation and die on a bloody operating table?” She got up and spun around, taking in every nook and cranny in the room.

  Fortunately, nobody answered. She sat down. “That’s a good start. Anything else?”

  “The ladies next door did mention a murder.”

  Kimmie’s jaw dropped and her eyes glittered. “A murder!” she repeated with the same tone that game show announcers used to say, “A new car!”

  “Back around the turn of the century . . . not this century . . . the oldest son, a young man of dubious character, died suddenly, days after making unwanted advances toward the cook’s daughter. The family suspected poison.”

  “And?” Kimmie was on the edge of her chair.

  “Murder could not be proved,” I said, supplying the second- and third-hand information the sisters had given me. “No poison was found, so they weren’t convicted. From there the story diverges. Some say the cook and her daughter were fired and left penniless. Nobody wanted to hire them, considering the allegations.”

  Kimmie was now smiling like the cat that ate the canary. If I tried hard, I could see yellow feathers dangling from her mouth. “So the spirit of the young man wouldn’t be at rest, and the cook and her daughter might have returned seeking vengeance.” I doubted anyone could be more delighted about the idea of a vengeful spirit inhabiting her house than Kimmie Kaminski.

  “That’s one version of the story.” I was almost afraid to tell the alternate version.

  Kimmie was perched so far forward in her chair that she was in danger of falling off.

  I continued the tale. “The other story suggested that the cook’s daughter became pregnant by the young man, and the cook and her daughter were kept prisoner in the house until she gave birth, so as not to sully the family’s reputation. The baby was stillborn, and the family buried it in the walls of the house. Only then did they allow the cook and her daughter to leave. They were provided a generous stipend to relocate to the West.” I sighed. “Although some say that was a story made up by the family, and both mother and daughter are also buried on the property.”

  Kimmie leaned back in her chair as if exhausted and gazed up wide-eyed at the cracked ceiling. “This just gets better.” She sat up to face her crew. “We’ll have to keep our ears open for a crying baby.” Her voice crackled with enthusiasm. “Skeptics think that sort of thing can be debunked as stray signals from baby monitors.” She turned back to me. “Tragic stories like that seem to echo from the walls in places like this. So many spirits not finding rest.”

  “Of course, these are just stories,” I said.

  “I’ll check it all out,” she said. “I have friends in the history department at the university. Never let it be said that Kimmie Kaminski ever relied on hearsay. I believe in historical documentation and the scientific method.” She was producing so much saliva she could have given Pavlov’s dogs a run for their money. “Was there anything else?”

  “Apparently,” I said, “Millard Fillmore had dinner here on more than one occasion.” That wasn’t unusual, since he lived in the community and, by all accounts, liked to eat.

  Kimmie was off and running. “Mr. President?” she said loudly to the walls. “Mr. President, can you knock on something and let us know you’re here?”

  Dad had completed his circle of the room and came up behind me. “Apparently the spirit of Millard Fillmore is quite deaf,” he whispered.

  But Kimmie wasn’t. She silenced him with a finger to her lips.

  Dad stepped back toward the staircase and casually rested an arm on the cracked varnished banister, which creaked a little in the process.

  Kimmie shot him a warning glare.

  Everyone in the room was stock-still as she listened.

  Suddenly a faint rattle seemed to come from somewhere upstairs. Kimmie and her fellow ghost hunters abandoned the interview and, along with all their equipment, scrambled up the stairs. The ceiling shook with their footsteps.

  Dad wandered over to me, looking suspiciously innocent with his hands jingling something in his pockets.

  I squinted at him. “Did you do that?”

  He ignored my question and handed me a business card. “See what I found.”

  The card read,

  Kimberly Kaminski

  Paranormal Investigator and Relocation Specialist

  Demons Exercised

  “I think she was going for ‘exorcised,’” I said.

  “Could be exercised.” Dad’s lips twisted into a quirky half smile. “Have you ever seen a flabby demon?”

  “I can’t say I’ve seen one at all, and I hope to keep it that way.” I
slapped his arm and a couple of tiddlywinks—what purists call “tiddledywinks”—fell onto the floor. I suspected the ghost the group was currently chasing was less of an ethereal orb and more of a plastic disk.

  “Wait!” I tapped the card. “This would imply that Kimmie doesn’t just intend to investigate ghosts. She wants to relocate them? Move them around? Why, that would make her . . .”

  “A real female ghostbuster,” Dad said. “I bet that’s what the chamber of foil is all about.”

  Moments later I was startled by a clear, definite knocking sound. It was coming from the front door, so I opened it. Jack stood on the doorstep, a few flakes of snow in his dark, curly hair. Behind him, Althena was coming up the walk.

  “Where is everybody?” she said as she shrugged off her coat.

  “I believe they’re upstairs with Millard Fillmore.” Dad managed to avoid the smile on his lips, but I could see it in his eyes. He was having an awful lot of fun.

  The paranormal team came down the stairs, congratulating each other over various spikes and readings on their equipment. “I think we got an EVP,” Chuck (or Zack) said.

  Kimmie briefly greeted Althena and the new arrivals, then went straight to the computer, where Spook played around with the equipment.

  I helped Althena find a spot to hang her coat, then asked, “What exactly is an EVP?”

  “Electronic voice phenomena,” Althena said, but she sounded bored when she said it. “Many paranormal groups believe that spirits can talk to them through sensitive electronic recorders or white noise.”

  By this point, the group had isolated the voice and were replaying it repeatedly. “I hear temperature,” Zack (or Chuck) said.

  “T’sure,” is what I heard. They played the audio five more times.

  “It could be tincture,” Kimmie said. “Remember this was a doctor’s office.”

  “Tincture,” Spook said. “I think you’re right.”

  Althena rolled her eyes, made her way to the dining room, and dropped her bag on the table with a thud. She removed a black cloth and covered the table.

  “Oh, sorry,” Kimmie said. “That was the first EVP I heard in this house, although Sy claimed he often heard disembodied voices.”

  “Perhaps we could put away the equipment for a time?” Althena said.

  “Can we leave one camera on to collect evidence?” Kimmie asked.

  Althena nodded, then Kimmie called for us all to gather around the dining room table.

  “I hope this isn’t Millard Fillmore’s seat,” Dad said as he pulled out a chair.

  “I do sense a spirit,” Althena said, “but I’m feeling a playfulness.” She raised her voice. “Is there a child here?” It seemed to be a universally understood truth that spirits were deaf.

  “A child or a baby?” Kimmie asked.

  Althena breathed in. “A child.”

  “Did you hear that?” Kimmie said.

  We all looked at each other.

  “I heard a child’s laugh upstairs,” Kimmie said.

  Zack and Chuck went running upstairs with their equipment.

  Althena sighed heavily. “The spirits are disturbed by all this running around. The child is gone now. A girl, I believe. I got the impression that she was searching for something. ‘Where’s my toy?’”

  I kicked Dad’s foot under the table.

  Althena sensed the disturbance. “Does the toy have significance?”

  “Maybe.” I turned to Kimmie. “Do you know if Sy has any toys in the house?”

  “He was like eighty. Why would he have toys?” she answered.

  “Old toys,” Dad said. “Very old toys.”

  “Come to think of it,” Kimmie said, “I think I did see some when I first came here. One was an elephant. I didn’t pay much attention.”

  Dad leaned forward. “When was the last time you saw them?”

  “Not since I moved in, I know that much.” She eyed Jack Wallace. “But a lot of things went missing after the wake.”

  “None of my family took any toys from this house,” Jack said.

  “These would have gone missing before Sy’s death.” I felt like a rat, but now that we were on the topic, I took my opportunity. “What can you tell us about Sy’s aide?”

  Kimmie squinted at me. “You mean the one that died in your shop? Sully? That’s one reason I wanted you here tonight. Murder causes a strong disturbance in the energy.” She circled to face an empty corner. “Sully, are you here tonight? Did you come back to check on Sy?”

  I decided to try a bolder tact. “Why would Sully take toys out of this house? For what purpose?”

  “Were they valuable?” Jack asked.

  “We’re not talking millions or anything,” I said.

  “Old toys aren’t typically objects of theft,” Dad explained. “Not by people who know what they’re doing. The most valuable ones are usually worth hundreds. Only the rarest can achieve values in the thousands.”

  “Maybe he didn’t know what he was doing, then,” Kimmie said. “Maybe he just wanted them for himself.”

  I shook my head. “Sully seemed to be a man of faith and character, from what everybody else has told me.”

  Kimmie snorted. “He was a self-righteous jerk. The only reason Sy kept him on as long as he did was because they were both veterans, and Sully was the only one up for one more retelling of the Battle of Triangle Hill.”

  Dad sent her a sympathetic look. “I don’t imagine you and he got along all that well. Sully would have been against ghost hunting and communing with spirits.”

  Kimmie’s jaw set. “Some people don’t understand our research and what we are trying to do.”

  I pulled out Kimmie’s business card that Dad had found. “Do you mean cash in on the transfer or removal of spirits?”

  Kimmie put her hands on her hips. “I see someone has been snooping. Those cards are old. Experiments didn’t exactly work out the way I’d hoped.”

  “You mean the tinfoil chamber of doom wouldn’t contain them?” I asked.

  Kimmie rolled her eyes. “It’s just a prototype. But no, it doesn’t contain them. Mostly because it’s impossible to tell when they’re actually inside the thing.”

  “Wait, did you really think people were going to pay you to get rid of their ghosts?” Jack said.

  Kimmie closed her eyes, trembling like a firecracker about to go off. “That was only part of it. Yes, some people are freaked out by having ghosts in their houses.”

  “What were you going to do with them?” Jack said. “Put them all in a foil box?”

  “Will you stop with the box?” Kimmie said. “The box was only temporary. See, for every person who wants to get rid of a spirit, there’s at least one person out there who would like one.”

  “You wanted to . . . sell ghosts?” Jack threw his head back in laughter, but Althena was appalled.

  “It doesn’t matter much anyway, because I haven’t figured out how to trap them, so don’t worry. However, if this house is as active as it seems, I don’t even need to go that far. I can open up the place for tours and use that to fund my experiments.”

  “Sully would have tried to dissuade Sy from inviting you and your team to investigate the house,” Dad said, his voice soft but distinct. “He certainly wouldn’t want you marrying the man and moving in.” Dad squinted at Kimmie, whether for effect or because of the dim light, I wasn’t sure. “What happened between the two of you?”

  “Look, I didn’t invite you here to interrogate me,” Kimmie said. “The truth is, Sy did invite me, and he liked what I had to say so much, he made sure I got the house so I could continue my work.”

  “But why marry him?” Jack said.

  Kimmie laughed. “It suited both our purposes. Even though he made sure he changed his will, leaving his house to a stranger would always be suspect. Had I somehow swindled the old dude? Was he really of sound mind and body? Besides, Sy lived here a long time. The spirits surely were comfortable with him. As his wi
fe, the relationship gave me a clear connection that they would understand.” She smiled at Jack. “Mostly Sy was for the idea because he wanted to see how the family would react. Too bad he never got a chance to tell them.”

  Jack tipped his head. “There’s still the second autopsy.”

  “Do you seriously think I offed your dear Uncle Sy?” Kimmie said.

  “You didn’t have to,” Jack said. “But if evidence comes back that suggests he might have suffered neglect in his final days, expect a good fight in court.” He held up his hands. “Not from me, mind you.”

  Kimmie smirked at him, and her voice came out dripping saccharine. “Of course not.”

  Suddenly Althena, who had been silently listening to us all this time, put her hands up, as if to quiet us. “Somebody’s here. Sully, is that you?”

  I distinctly heard a cough.

  “Who was that?” I said.

  Everybody at the table shook their heads. Zack and Chuck were still upstairs.

  “Sully,” Kimmie said loudly, “are you angry at me for getting you fired?”

  “Uncle Sy,” Jack called out, mocking her tone, “are you angry at Kimmie for making a mockery of your death?”

  “No,” Althena said. “I’m sensing—”

  Before she could finish, a whispered voice said, “Yesssss.” As the final consonant faded into a hiss, we all looked at each other, wide-eyed and barely breathing.

  Chapter 17

  “Did someone move the monkey?” I stood at the register and stared, transfixed, at the toy with the cymbals. I wasn’t sure what was different, but a shiver ran down my spine anyway. I had a macabre sense that, when nobody was in the shop, it hopped down from the shelf and banged its cymbals together, sending a message in Morse code to all the other demonic monkeys, thus furthering their plot for world domination. Or, at least, my personal demise.

  Cathy waved a hand in front of my face. “Don’t freak out, Liz. I dusted the shelf this morning.”

  I closed my eyes and sighed in relief. When I looked up, Cathy was grinning at me.

  “I don’t blame you for freaking out,” she said. “Last night sounded bizarre.”