Emma wrote down what Audri said.
“And where was this hot air balloon place?” she said.
Audri moved her jacket and fished around inside her purse.
“I think I still have… what was the name of that place?” she said.
After a few seconds, she pulled out a brochure and laid it on the table in front of Emma.
“There, that’s the place. Stinson’s Hot Air Extravaganza. Out by the abandoned mine shafts. Nice Balloon. Creepy old man that runs it though. I think he lives in the mines. Strange for a man who lives under the ground to run a business that takes him up in the sky. I guess it gives his life a certain symmetry though,” Audri said.
Emma picked up the brochure.
“You say he was creepy? What way? He mutter stuff under his breath, like in a language you never heard before? Have any weird pendants around his neck or anything?” Emma said.
Audri shook her head.
“No, nothing like that, just creepy. He kept staring at us… well, me, in a lecherous sort of way, like the balloon wasn’t the only ride he wanted to give me,” Audri said, quivering all over just a bit.
“Stinson’s, huh? Mind if I keep this?” Emma said, pocketing the brochure.
“No, keep it,” Audri said.
“Well, that’s a good a place to start as any. I’ll go out there, have a look around, brace the old man. See if he has a history, maybe he’s a Caster on the low-down with an eye for you, thought with Harry out of the picture he could blow some hot air your way,” Emma said, stuffing her pad back in her jacket.
Audri nodded as Emma retrieved Barrett. The two women started to slide out of the booth.
“Oh! I almost forgot. There is one more thing that seemed peculiar,” Audri said, dropping her purse in the seat beside her and digging around inside it.
Emma leaned back in her seat and waited. A second later, Audri pulled out a check and presented it to Emma.
“Pay in advance. I like that, thanks,” Emma said, folding the check and putting it in the inside pocket of her jacket.
Audri shook her head.
“No. I mean I can if that’s how you prefer, but that’s another check,” she said.
Emma pulled it out and looked down at it, the first thing she noticed was ‘NSF’ stamped in big block letters across it.
“Uh, this here is a bounced check. NSF is ‘Non Sufficient Funds’. Which reminds me, uh, I’m gonna need to be paid in cash,” she said.
Audri leaned forward and pointed at the check.
“I know what NSF means. What’s strange is, that’s check 582. Check 582 is the one my Harry wrote to the balloon man. It was made out to Stinson’s Hot Air Extravaganza. I know, cause I looked at the check register. We had plenty of money to cover that. But now that check is made out to the Hemisphere Forest Preservation Society for twenty-five thousand dollars. We certainly don’t have that kind of money to throw around. Somebody altered that check after Harry wrote it,” Audri said.
Emma examined the check and could just make out evidence of different handwriting below the first. It looked like someone had gone to great lengths to erase the original.
“And you think this Stinson guy did it? Why?” she said.
Audri shrugged.
“I have no idea,” she said.
6
Three arm jerking pulls and three bone jarring slams later, Emma was back in her car. She let Barrett hop off her shoulder and on to the head rest on the passenger side. She watched as Audri got in her car, feeling some resentment at how it only took her one easy pull to open her door and another to close it. Sitting there in her P.O.S, she waited until her new client backed out of her parking space and drove away. When she was gone, Emma looked at Barrett in the rear view mirror. He perched on the headrest and cleaned one of his feet.
“Did you hear all that, Barrett? What do you think? Maybe this is it, huh?” she said, feeling an ember of hope.
The fact was, there was always that ember of hope. Every case she took held out the possibility that in the process she would find someone or something that would be the answer they both were looking for. As she stared at Barrett, she had to believe they were both still looking for it. With every new hope that sprang up within her, there was the yawning black hole of doubt that she would ever get Detective Sullivan Barrett back the way he was. Mixing with that doubt was the raw fear that the longer he stayed a parrot, the more he would forget he ever was anything else. At first she thought he didn’t hear her. Then the fear grew like a blood stain as she wondered if he no longer understood her words, any human words.
“Hopeless! You’ll only be disappointed!” Barrett said, his pronouncement followed by an ear piercing screech as he shuffled first to one end of the head rest and back again.
Fluffing his feathers out, he fell back into silence as he cleaned his other foot.
Emma stared at her partner turned bird, her eyes narrowing.
“Look Barrett… Sully. A little optimism might be nice, you know? I would think you would want to keep trying, to do everything we can and some things we couldn’t to get you back, you know? Enough with the negativity already,” she said, slouching in her seat.
A heavy sigh later, she looked at the bird who seemed content to just sit there.
“You know there’s only two choices here. I can stop trying and you stay a bird-brain forever. Or I keep at it and we get you back,” she said, giving him a hard stare in the rear view mirror.
Another piercing squawk later and Barrett, the parrot offered her a third choice.
“Let me go! Fly Away!”
Emma bit down hard and could only stare. She knew it was an option and a very real one, but one she could never make. It was more evidence feeding her fears that Sully Barrett was forgetting who he was. Never in a million years could she imagine the real Sully ever giving up, quitting. In his right mind, he wouldn’t give up and neither would she. Shaking her head, she turned away and jammed her key into the ignition.
“For that you ought to get solitary. Three days in the cage with the blanket over you. I’m not giving up you stupid bird, so you can just forget it,” she said.
Emma threw the car in reverse and nearly sent Barrett onto the dashboard in a heap of green feathers.
Cranking the wheel and jamming the gearshift into DRIVE, Emma peeled out of the parking lot to track down her first lead. Watching her former partner flutter back to the headrest another fear wrapped around her heart. She had called him a stupid bird like it was nothing. That made her wonder if she too was starting to think of him only as a bird and not the man who saved her life.
7
Emma stood looking at the vertical shaft going straight down into the ground. Dust and debris were gathered at the entrance. Twigs perched around the yawning hole. Paper and garbage blew around her feet.
“Wherever the case takes you, right, Emma?” she said, uncrossing her arms.
The ladder clinging to one side of the chasm did not look trustworthy. She looked around at where she was. Rough rock and dirt walls surrounded her. Behind her in an open space about a quarter mile off the road sat the business end of Stinson’s Hot Air Emporium. The balloon was tethered to the ground. The gondola which looked about as well put together as the ladder in the mine shaft, sat motionless. Above it, swaying in the breeze ever so slightly, was a patchwork hot air balloon. Shaking her head, Emma took hold of the ladder and began her descent.
When she got to the bottom, she dusted off her hands and waited for her eyes to get used to the dark. Stretching off to her left, a long tunnel ran through the rock. Bits of chain, a broken pick handle, and pools of standing water lay about her feet. Sagging beams hung above her head, spaced at intervals down the corridor. A short distance ahead a rusty handcart sat on the rails that disappeared into the inky black. Deciding that one bad decision deserved another, Emma pulled a mini flashlight from her jacket pocket and headed deeper into the mine.
Cold stale air tickled h
er nose and she began to smell mildew and dry rot. The only sounds were her boots scuffling the rock, loose stones under her feet, and the ping of dripping water. She had no idea where Stinson lived in the mine, only that he did.
“Should'a made it 150 a day,” she said to herself, ducking and cringing as the flutter of bat wings brushed by her ear.
With every passing second, the desire to turn back got stronger. She had left Barrett in the car and now she regretted that. Even his company would have been reassuring. As it was, alone in the dark, the rock above her seemed to be closing in and a feeling of intense claustrophobia began to make her breathing erratic. Just when she was about to get out of there, she heard voices. She could see a pin-prick of light up ahead and she raced toward it as if it could save her. Placed in a drill hole in the wall, a candle burned stutteringly. Beyond that, a break-off room opened up. She stood just outside of it, trying to hear what was being said.
“True, true, Captain Stinson. We are men of action. Skies become us.”
“Ooooh! You're a Balloon Man? I just love a Balloon Man, the way they can take me… with all that hot… air,” a female said, her words coming out breathy and scandalous.
Confused, Emma furrowed her brow. The male voice had mentioned Stinson’s name, so she knew she had found him. Stepping around the bend in the rock, she entered the break-off room. An amber glow from several lit candles suffused the space. Her confusion blossomed into revulsion as her eyes took in the sight before her. Old Man Stinson had his back turned. He had his right arm around what looked to be a life sized cardboard cutout figure of a voluptuous redhead in a pink coral sequenced evening gown. With his left arm, the wrinkled hermit lovingly caressed the cutout’s face.
Embarrassed, Emma looked away, feeling like she was intruding, until she realized the old man was getting amorous with what amounted to a paper doll. Seeing an opened box on the ground, Emma stooped and picked up a sheet of paper. It was a flyer.
“Paper People. The proper purveyor of pulp personalities. Nothing looks better on paper than our people!”
Below that bold claim were some asterisks.
*Please consult weather forecast prior to exterior use.
**Intimate contact not recommended.
Emma looked around the room and saw several more cutouts. One was a ship’s captain. Another was a secret agent type, decked out in a tuxedo and holding a martini. There was the 1940’s era gangster, and an astronaut. The Queen of England stood in one corner while across from her was a rather large cutout of what Emma could only assume was a roller derby team. The buxom women were grouped together, posed seductively on their roller skates, their spandex uniforms hiding nothing.
“Oh, Jessica, I can take you up, but right now, you’re kinda gettin’ me up,” Stinson said.
He giggled like a little girl, a very old, wrinkled little man-girl.
Emma decided she had heard enough.
“Ahem…” she said.
The old man turned his head slowly to look at her. His scream came out in a high pitched squeak. Stinson threw 'Jessica' at Emma and tried to look normal. Feeling awkward, Emma shifted her feet.
“Look, sorry for the… interruption, um, I’m Detective Emma… Spaulding and I, uh…” she said.
Looking to her side, Emma saw the 'Jessica' cutout, its sultry stare making her uncomfortable.
Shaking her head and rubbing her hands on her pants, she took a step forward, out of the eye-line of the cutout, and started again.
“Sorry. I’m Emma Spaulding, E.S.P Detective Agency. I’m working a case for a client, a client you recently took up in your balloon. Her husband, well, he turned into a Sasquatch and she hired me, to… do something about it,” Emma said.
The old man scrunched up his already scrunched up face, and went over to a rickety wooden cabinet, grabbing a bottle and a dusty glass. He poured himself a drink and threw it back, then poured himself another.
“I take lots of people up in my balloon, lady, ain’t none of them turn into Sasquatches, get me? So you can go back to your fancy clients and tell them I ain’t had nothing to do with it,” he said, pointing a finger at Emma and spilling some of his drink.
Emma tried to keep her composure as she stared at the defiant codger. Slowly she reached into her jacket as Stinson poured himself another drink. Just as he brought the glass to his mouth, Emma spun the top off of her salt shaker and threw a heaping amount at him.
“What the hell was that for?! I ain’t drinking margaritas here, ya stupid floozy!” Stinson said, dusting off the salt from his dirty undershirt.
“Yeah, sorry about that, I didn’t—”
Emma quickly reached into the other side of her jacket and pulled out a lime green water pistol. Three quick trigger pulls later, Emma was sure the old man wasn’t a demon.
“What kind of detective are ya?! Intruding on a man in his own mine shaft!”
Emma paid no attention, she had to know. She pulled a silver spoon from the left outside pocket of her jacket and held it out to the old man.
“Take this,” she said.
The old man looked at her.
“I’ve already got a spoon!” the old man said, wiping the water from his eyes.
Feeling her impatience growing, Emma rushed forward and pushed the business end of the spoon against the man’s cheek. Nothing. Satisfied that he was a straight civilian, Emma pocketed her spoon and took out her notebook.
“What the hell was all that for?!” Stinson said.
“Oh, sorry. I just had to know is all,” Emma said, flipping to a blank sheet.
“Know what? How I taste with a little seasoning?!”
Emma ignored the question and got to her own.
“You took up a man and a woman a couple days ago, the same woman whose husband turned into a Sasquatch. They paid you with a check. That check somehow got altered and passed onto someone else. Know anything about that?” she said.
Stinson seemed to study her. He moved slowly to a rickety table, a table which was really nothing more than a couple of flat boards with some two by fours nailed to each corner. Emma thought nothing of it until, with a speed that belied his frailty, the old man reached under an oily rag, grabbed a pistol, and pointed it at her. The gun itself was massive, a black powder affair that shook in his trembling hands. Emma felt a jolt of fear. This was quickly replaced by a feeling of self loathing at letting the old man get the drop on her.
“Now you listen here, ya red-headed floozy, tart. I’m a man, see! Maybe I ain’t much ‘a one and maybe my best days are behind me, and MAYBE my best days weren’t much better than the days I’m havin’ now. And maybe—”
“Are you gonna do something with that gun or MAYBE get to the point?” Emma said, afraid now she would get as old as Stinson was before this exchange reached its terminus.
“The point is! The point… The point is, this is my house, even if it ain’t no house and you can’t come in here throwing seasoning on me and interrupting my special time with all your dang questions!” Stinson said, his eyes tracking her as she slowly took a couple of steps to her left.
The old man’s eyes narrowed, but his mind was slow to grasp Emma’s intentions. With a quickness that came from countless life or death encounters, Emma reached out and grabbed the fallen 'Jessica' cutout. She pulled it close with her left hand. With the other, she pulled her lime green water pistol and held it to the cutout’s head.
“Drop the gun, Stinson! Drop it or I’ll soak your lady friend here! She’ll be paper mache before she hits the ground!” Emma said, feeling like a complete idiot.
Stinson yelped that same high pitched squeal he made when he discovered Emma in the room a few moments before. He dropped the gun like it was red hot and it landed in the dirt with a heavy thud.
“No! Please! Not my Jessica! I’ll answer your blamed questions, just let her go!” the old man cried.
Emma backed up a step as the old man took one toward her, holding out his hands in a placating ges
ture.
“The check? It was written to you. How did it get passed to the preservation society?” Emma said.
The old man didn’t answer right away, but took another step forward. Emma tightened her grip, threatening to put a crease in ‘Jessica’s’ neck.
“Okay, okay! Yeah, I took that couple up. They was in love and damned happy about it. Maybe I stared at them… her a bit too long. Maybe I muttered some things I shouldn’t a muttered, but they didn’t have to be so rude about it! Gave me looks like I was some kind of creep, then said as much, and to my face. All the time riding in my balloon. Eating their wedding cake, like they was the only people in all a Hemisphere that had a right to be happy! Damn them, but I got me a little revenge. And I bet it was worth it too! I woulda’ liked to have seen their faces when that check bounced, like I’m sure it did. I added some zeros. Scrubbed off as much of the words as I could. I passed the check to that damn witch!” Stinson said, raising his hand in triumph, his gravelly voice going up an octave as he relished his ‘victory’.
Emma furrowed her brow. Forgetting her stranglehold on 'Jessica' she let the cutout fall away.
“Witch? Which Witch?” Emma said.
The air seemed to go out of Stinson. He grabbed a wooden chair and collapsed into it, resting his hands on his knobby knees.
“I call her a Witch, truth is I don’t know what she is. A freeloadin’, black magic, huzzy of a wench I’ll tell ya that!” Stinson said, seeming to get his second wind and almost coming out of his chair.
Emma pocketed her water pistol and rubbed her face, thinking that she definitely should have asked for 150 a day.
“Why is the Witch a Wench, Stinson?” she said, staring at the old man, trying to keep her cool, and hoping all this was leading somewhere.
“Cause she never pays for all those balloon rides! She threatened to turn me into a walnut when I told her my balloon weren’t no gravy train. Finally, instead’a payin’, she agreed to put one of her spells on my friends here, made it so I could talk to ‘em. I live under people and I fly high above ‘em, but I never get to be part of ‘em. I’m a man! I have needs!” he said, looking like he was about to cry.
Emma Spaulding Paranormal Detective: Sasquatch (A Hemisphere Story Book 1) Page 3