Deep-Fried Homicide (The Laurel Falls Mysteries Book 1)

by Patricia Lee Macomber

  "It's all right." Benny clinked his cup back onto his saucer and smiled. "We meet a lot of skeptics in our line of work."

  "I bet you do. But I'm no longer one of them. Mind you, I'm not buying into all your supernatural hooey. But I believe that I spoke to my mother a moment ago and that Benny made it happen. I'm grateful."

  "And you believe that Benny is really channeling people who sign their own sports cards with their own REAL signatures?" Trina's eyebrows shot up like two well-trained circus dogs.

  "I do," he chuckled with an exaggerated nod. "I'm not sure that that makes them authentic in the same way that the star having touched the card would make them. But I don't think you're a crook or anything."

  "Thank you." Benny clapped Jason on the shoulder and smiled.

  "I'm going to show myself out now. It's late and I have a lot of thinking to do." He moved toward the door and then turned. "And tomorrow I have to see Mr. Armstrong about his cards. I have to find a way to explain all this to him so that he'll understand."

  "I'll still give his money back if he wants it." Benny's face was soft and genuine. He was a truly nice guy.

  "Don't you worry about it, Benny. I'll figure something out." He smiled and winked at Trina. Then he left for home.

  FREE PREVIEW: LOVE LOST

  A Historical Time-Travel Mystery

  CHAPTER ONE

  The sun shimmered through dusty panes of glass, flashing off the requisite metal napkin holder and momentarily blinding Amanda. The tray tilted, shook. A tall glass of iced tea held its ground for a few moments, then tottered enough to slop tea onto the table in a generous puddle.

  “Damn!” she spat out loud before she could catch herself.

  She let the tray clatter to the table loudly, a rain of peas slipping over the edge of the institutional plate and rolling about aimlessly. There was tea on the tray, tea on the table, tea all over her hand. She snatched a wad of napkins from that guilty holder and began blotting at the mess furiously, cursing under her breath all the while. Her face red, hazel eyes flashing to crimson, she tore at the napkins, trying fruitlessly to wipe the sticky sweet tea from her hand.

  She felt the burning gaze of a dozen pairs of eyes on the back of her neck. The soft hairs rose and prickled. Finally, she dropped into the chair and hung her head. Her taste for tea had waned, her appetite gone. For the briefest of moments, she was that small girl back in the cafeteria of PS42, sitting alone, mocked by nearly everyone and weeping into her Partridge Family lunch box. Amanda Stevens was about to cry.

  “Having one of THOSE days, are we?”

  Amanda’s eyes shot upward, falling upon a smile which was brighter than it had any right to be. “Having one of those lives.” She waved her hand in the general direction of the other chair and sighed. “Better not sit too close. It could be contagious.”

  Ignoring the fringe of acid on Amanda’s words, Dana sat down, smoothing out her flowered skirt with great care and slipping her chin into the bowl of her cupped hands. “So, you had a little mishap. Happens to us all. No need to get...”

  “Oh, it’s not that! Face it! I’m a mess!” Amanda ran her hands through her stringy blonde hair and bit into her lip. “My house is a mess. My yard is a mess. The boat is a mess. I have more work on my desk than I can get to in three lifetimes. Face it. I’m a bona fide disaster.”

  “You need to get away from things for a while. Take a vacation. Relax.” Dana smiled again, this time a bit cooler. To Amanda she seemed bored, tired, probably, of hearing another in the long list of Amanda disasters.

  “I tried to take a vacation once. Don’t you remember? A simple drive up into the mountains to stay at a nice cabin and unwind. Halfway there, my car broke down. I went to call the auto club and by the time I got back, the road had iced up and my car had slid into a ravine.”

  Dana made a sour face and blinked. “Oh yea. I forgot about that one.”

  “I didn’t.” Amanda picked up her fork and pushed a few errant peas back into the communal pile, then made as if to eat them.

  Dana sat back, folding her arms over her chest and watching as though she expected a light bulb to appear over Amanda’s head. “You know what you need? You need a MAN.”

  Amanda laughed at that, the sound of it attracting more attention than her previous racket. “You HAVE to be kidding. We’ve been best friends for twelve years. In all that time, have you EVER known me to have a decent relationship?”

  “Yes. Once.” That pointed glare made shivers run up and down Dana’s spine, but she forged on. “And you have to stop dwelling on it.”

  “Some people were made to be in relationships. And some people were made to be alone. I’m an alone kinda gal. And I’ve made my peace with that.” She reached for the tea, suddenly drawing back her hand as though she’d been bitten. “Besides, I’m getting tired of hearing every man on the planet explain how I’m too detached to get serious about.”

  Dana reached out and grabbed Amanda’s hand, yanking it to the center of the table. “Do you see how hard and rough and callused that hand is? And you hardly ever do any actual labor.” She stretched across the table, stabbing at Amanda’s chest with the same bony finger. “You mark my words, Mandy. If you don’t learn to use it, your heart’s gonna end up the same way.”

  Dana shoved back her chair and stood up from it, her heels drowning out the scrape of light metal against cheap tile. Amanda stared over her shoulder after her friend, jaw drooping and eyes wide. Was that all a callous act, meant for effect? Or was Dana really about to abandon her? For several very slow heartbeats, Amanda was very scared. Then her mouth shut, and her head turned, and the walls went up again.

  In a small square of light cast by a small square screen, Amanda sat motionless. Her shimmering hazel eyes were captured by the visions in that television, visions that mocked her own memory and stalked her like time-traveling demons. The faces were familiar, owned and operated by the movie channel. The story was as old as time, more painful than death and twice as frightful.

  As the heroine bent to kiss the life from her lover’s lips, Amanda pulled a sour face. Her fingers were so tightly wrapped around the remote that the white of her knuckles glared through the darkness. Before the hero could die, before her own heart could release its tears, Amanda clicked the “off” button viciously and tossed the remote to the floor.

  “Damn!” she cursed and launched herself from the chair.

  Thin hands rubbed thinner-still arms as she tried to ward off the chill of that moment. It was too close, too familiar, too much her own pain. The people on that screen might as well have been Scott and her. He had died the same way, encased in white sheets and moaning through the agony of a life too full of suffering. The accident had been swift, but the suffering had drawn out for days. In the end, Scott gave up the fight. The pain of sorrowful life wasn’t worth fighting to hold onto. Amanda wasn’t worth living for.

  Amanda shook her head violently, fighting to dislodge those memories before they could seep into her soul again. Enough sleepless nights and haunting half-remembered dreams. Life should go on, she thought, not stagnate and wither.

  She wandered the house, searching in vain for something to distract her from those memories. If she tried to sleep now, the dreams would come and then the downward spiral would begin.

  She’d been watching her feet, the way the little pink satin slippers slid and shuffled over the carpet. As she looked up, the hallway stretched out before her, impossibly long and growing longer with each passing second. At the end of it...the door. Not just any door, this was the door to her father’s room. It was THE door, beyond which lay her father’s things, his prized possessions, his soul. Everything he cared about was inside that room, everything save for the little boat which sat rotting at the dock for lack of use.

  Amanda brushed back a lock of hair and leaned against the wall. The surface of it felt cool against her warm skin, lent some reality to that surreal moment. She chewed on her lip and straightene
d her back as a flood of new memories took root in her mind.

  Her father, too sweet for words, bringer of grape life savers and fixer of broken toys, had left a giant hole in her life when he’d passed. In her mind’s eye, she could see him returning from work, his overalls drenched in sweat and dusted with the metal shavings which had no doubt contributed to his early demise. But no matter how hard the day or heavy the load, he had always had a spring in his step, a gift in his pocket. Daddies never forgot their little girls and little girls never stopped worshipping their daddies.

  Now she was an orphan, her father three years gone, and her mother dead from the moment of her birth. If everything had worked as she’d planned it, Scott would have been there to hold her up during those hard times. But like her parents and everyone else she’d ever known, he, too, had gone on to heaven without her.

  “Stop it,” she muttered to herself, shoving off from the wall and making ready to turn.

  She couldn’t do it. For three years, she had let that door taunt her and prey on her mind. It was time to go in, to face reality and cleanse herself.

  Hands fisted, she marched on that door, determined to open it in one gigantic show of courage. Between beginning and end of that hallway, her resolve melted, sliding from her in little bits until she was left, shaking and sweating, before that door.

  “Don’t bother Daddy when he’s working, Pumpkin.”

  The voice of their housekeeper was so clear, so loud, that it might well have traveled across inches rather than years. Amanda sighed and let her chin rest on her chest. The doorknob came into clear view then, a giant staring eyeball in her mind.

  Dangling from that knob, unmoving, was a small brass key ring. That, too, had been her father’s. It held the keys to his world. House, boat, den and car...everything he loved could be laid bare with a turn of those keys. Also dangling from that ring was the small ceramic heart she had made him in summer camp. It was aged and crackled, but the emotion behind it burned brightly.

  Amanda reached out one delicate hand, watching as it shook its way to the knob. Fingers uncurled, closing again as they found kinship with the cool metal of the key. One turn and it was all over.

  She shut her eyes as the door creaked open, frightened of what she might see. No, that wasn’t entirely correct. She was more frightened of what she would NOT see. Her father should still be sitting there, tinkering with dials and adjusting headsets, just as he had been every night for nearly twenty years.

  There was only an empty chair to greet her. The cold reality of that slapped her hard in the face, sent her head spinning as her emotions spiraled out of control. Daddy was gone, never to return. The scent of his aftershave lingered still.

  She took one step into the room, her left hand gripping the door frame with all its might. Fainting was not merely a possibility. It was a very real threat.

  The small swivel chair, gleaned from a junk yard and recovered in gray wool, held court over the vast array of radios and transceivers which had been her father’s life-long hobby. Amanda’s eyes passed over that chair, leaping from seat to back as they fell on the indention left by her father’s constant presence. From there, it was a short journey to the workbench which held his equipment.

  Dust coated everything. A few homeless spiders had found sanctuary among the unused tools and parts. Their webs shimmered slightly in the half-light. They swung from the dials of the ham radio.

  Amanda let out a little yelp and leaped to her feet, stunned by the fact that she had somehow slipped into that chair as she rode the wave of memories which had so suddenly washed over her. She could almost see her father’s hand reaching for the dial. It brought tears to her eyes, sent them cascading over her cheeks in long rivers.

  But it was only her own small hand which traced the rough edges of the dials, danced over the darkened meters and face plates. She knew nothing of her father’s hobby. That had been his alone, something he had kept from her and had shared only with the disembodied voices halfway around the world.

  Her wrist twitched and a meter glowed back to life with a moist pop of electricity. Amanda pressed one hand to her mouth, fingers twitching as they read the smile on her face. It worked. Somehow, everything still worked.

  She studied the board for a moment, blinking rapidly as she marveled at her father’s skill. He knew what every button and dial did. There was no need for labels. Amanda was lost among all that circuitry; helpless in the face of those knobs and buttons.

  She tried the large knob, turning it carefully until something akin to a pig-squeal came out of the small box speaker. Static assaulted her ears, whisking away the squeal until there was nothing left of it. She turned it some more and heard silence. Another turn brought a faint hum, accompanied by the softest of voices.

  “KG5 can you hear me?”

  Amanda gasped and locked her hand tightly over her mouth. Before her, a large microphone sat, begging to be used. She stared at it, wide-eyed, hoping against hope that the other person wouldn’t hear her. It felt like an intrusion to even be there, much less to be using her father’s equipment to eavesdrop.

  She spun the dial again, this time more briskly, listening as static and squawk melted into a dull roar. There, amid a high-pitched whistle, she found another voice.

  “...and I swear to God, that damn deer just ran off into....”

  She shook her head rapidly and turned the dial again, her face suddenly twisting into a mask of worry and confusion.

  No sound. Silence. She pulled a face and reached out to the microphone button with one trembling finger. “Can anybody hear me?” Her voice, nearly as tremulous as her hands, sounded foreign to her.

  There was no response.

  “Hello?”

  “I hear you just fine, little lady. I was eating a sandwich is all. Had my mouth full.”

  “Oh…hello.” A smile sped onto her face, unbidden.

  “Where you at, hon? What’re your call letters?”

  “Umm…I’m in Maine. What are call letters? You’ll have to excuse me but I’m new to this.” A few moments of dead silence reminded her to let up on the button.

  “…to identify yourself and your equipment.”

  “I’m not sure. This is my father’s old radio. Where would I find those call letters?” She shifted in the chair, wiggling into her father’s impression.

  “Those should be on the mic somewhere. If not, they’re probably pasted onto the front of the main receiver. That’s where mine are at least.”

  “Oh. Oh!” She squinted at the large piece of masking tape on the front of the receiver and read slowly. “K-5-9-Z-Z-9.”

  There was a long pause, dead silence and the sudden fear that the equipment had stopped working. Amanda checked all the lights and found them still on. “Hello?”

  “Sorry. But are you sure?”

  “Yes, quite sure.”

  “You say that’s your father’s radio?”

  “Yes, it is…or was. He’s been dead nearly three years now.”

  “Well, that explains it then. Your father’s name was Hal, right?”

  Amanda slammed her back against the chair and stared at the microphone like it might attack. Slowly, her hand shaking even more than before, she leaned forward and pushed the button. “Yes.”

  “I used to talk to your dad every night. I’m up here at a weather station near Anchorage.”

  Tears choked off her words and stung at her eyes. Amanda coughed, trying to find her voice again. “Petey’s gonna freeze up there.”

  “Say again?”

  “That’s what daddy used to say every morning over the newspaper. He’d read the weather reports and tell me, ‘Petey’s gonna freeze up there.’ You’re Petey, right?”

  “Oh my Lord! You are Hal’s little girl, aren’t ya?”

  “And you’re his pal, Petey. He talked about you a lot. You were stationed in Anchorage eight years ago. And before that, you were at a Coast Guard station near Norfolk.”

  “
I’ll be danged!” She could hear the smile in the man’s voice, across all those miles and through the static. Then it changed. “I’m real sorry to hear about your daddy. I tried getting in touch with him for about a year. Figured he had lost his license or maybe gotten sick. I sure am sorry he’s gone.”

  “Tell me about my daddy. Please?”

  Amanda awakened with a yelp, her head shooting up from the desk and twisting this way and that. The radio was still on, the lights mocking her with little waving indicators. Had she talked all night? When had she fallen asleep?

  “Oh my God!” she groaned as she looked at her watch.

  She turned off the equipment and bolted from the chair, gaining the middle of the hall before turning back to lock the door and hang the keys in their rightful place on the knob. Her father had always done it that way, and that’s the way it should be done.

  A quick shower and a piece of bread got her on her way, only a half hour late for work but enough to make her frantic. In all the years she’d worked at Barnes, she’d never once been late.

  She drove like a madwoman, or as much like one as the old Chevy would allow. The nearly bald tires squealed into the parking space and she shoved open the door with one hand, even as the other was shutting off the engine.

  Dana stared at her as she bolted past her desk. Her skirt whipped about her knees in the wind and her bag thumped her hip. She made quick work of putting away her things and turning on her computer, and then tried to catch her breath. It wasn’t that Mr. Anderson would be mad at her for being late. She was mad at herself.

  Dana approached, slowly and with a silly grin on her face. She grabbed Amanda’s chin in one hand and turned her head to the left.

  “So, what were you doing last night when you fell asleep?”

  Amanda blinked stupidly. “Listening to the radio. Why?”

  “Because you have the perfect imprint of a pen on your cheek.” Dana laughed a bit and rested one hip on the desk.