A Dash of Murder (Pecan Bayou Series)

by Teresa Trent

  “Yes, yes,” said Don Schuller. “I can understand your discomfort with the situation, Miss Boyle. Did I come to understand there was some sort of police investigation going on out there at present?”

  “That is exactly right, sir. It seems there was foul play out at the old hospital, and one of our citizens was murdered. Now this group of … vultures …” Her eyes scanned the crowd and lit upon Maggie. “ … want to raise the spirits of the dead. Including the spirit of the murdered man, Oliver Canfield, one of the town’s most prominent businessmen.”

  The crowd murmured on that last statement. Canfield’s reputation preceded him, so the prominent businessman part probably wasn’t settling in too well. “This is a group and an event in our community we do not have to condone, gentlemen,” she said to the council, “and we look to your leadership to rid us of these Satanic influences.”

  Howard bolted up in the back of the room. It seemed he had finally scrounged up enough courage to confront Miss Boyle. His eyes bugged out as the anger rose to his face. “That is not true!”

  Tom Schuller pounded his gavel. “Miss Boyle has the floor, sir.”

  I felt Maggie jump up beside me. “She sure does, because I wouldn’t step on the garbage she’s throwin’ out. We are not affiliated with anything Satanic. I’m sitting in the pew same as you each week. I just don’t lord it over others as you are apt to do.”

  Tom Schuller banged the gavel again. “Order!”

  Miss Boyle’s mouth soured. “As you can see, members of the council, these are the kinds of people we are forced to deal with in this situation.”

  “And what kind of people is that, you … you …”

  Tom Schuller interrupted before my aunt could fill in the blank. “If you would like to speak, Mrs. Schaeffer, then stand behind Miss Boyle at the podium and wait your turn.”

  Maggie left the seating area, heaved an indignant sigh and stood behind Miss Boyle. The two of them were a contrast in height standing next to each other. My aunt’s head was right about at Miss Boyle’s bony shoulder blades. Miss Boyle turned slightly, looked down her nose directly at her and continued.

  “I would like to move that all access to the hospital be prohibited to the Pecan Bayou Paranormal Society on Halloween or any other day.”

  Miss Boyle gathered herself and glowered at my aunt as she left the podium.

  Maggie reached up to adjust the microphone but could not quite get her fingertips on the top. Howard hastened to the front to help her out with the mic. After making the adjustment, he continued to stand up there with her. It was the bravest thing I had seen him do in our short association.

  “Gentlemen,” she started quietly. It was a distinct contrast to the near-yelling she had focused on Miss Boyle a few moments earlier. Aunt Maggie was pulling on every ounce of reserve she had to follow the decorum of the town council. “The Pecan Bayou Paranormal Society is not an agent of the devil. We are people who are curious, that’s all. We’re curious about the possibility of an existence on another plane. I lost my husband, Jeeter, a few years back, and for a while there I didn’t think I could go on. One of the comforts I have found is in my faith, that’s true. But until I get there and meet him on that celestial cloud, I would just love to know where he is and if he’s all right. Sounds crazy, I know. And I know I’m not going to find him floatin’ around out there at the hospital.”

  “What about the argument that the site is unsafe?” asked Don Schuller.

  Howard lowered his head to speak into the microphone. “Sir, we have done a preliminary safety check of the property and have found the structure still very solid.”

  Arvin Wilson, Chief of Police, stood up in the back of the room. He had on the same navy blue uniform my dad wore with a few extra pieces of brass affixed. He pushed his glasses up his nose with one finger, and he stepped forward. “If I may add, Don. My men have checked through the site, and there has been an officer posted there at the crime scene ever since the discovery of Mr. Canfield. We want to find who killed Mr. Canfield and need to protect our investigating area. Lieutenant Kelsey has spoken in depth with the members of the paranormal group and made sure they know what they can and cannot do. With all of these conditions in place, I think the coexistence of the police and ghost hunters will be fine.” He stepped back and tipped his Stetson, making me think of a knight stepping away from a king.

  Leo Fitzpatrick, who had been listening quietly, rose from his chair and raised his hand.

  “Yes, sir,” said Tom Schuller. “If you have something to present to the council, please come to the podium so everyone can hear you.”

  Fitzpatrick strode to the front of the meeting room. “My name is Leo Fitzpatrick, and I just wanted to ask what kind of plans the town has for the old hospital.”

  Don Schuller leaned back in his well-padded chair. “Can’t say we have much of a plan at present, Mr. Fitzpatrick.”

  Dr. MacPhee added, “That old place has been there for so long, most of us have forgotten about it.”

  “So there was no plan in place to develop it?”

  “Not that I know of. Nothing has come through the Chamber of Commerce,” Don said.

  “Thank you.” Fitzpatrick left the podium.

  “Well you’ve certainly all given us something to think about,” said Tom Schuller. “The investigation is scheduled to go off on Saturday, Halloween, and it is now Thursday night. We will take about 24 hours to discuss, research and come to our decision. I would like to schedule another meeting tomorrow afternoon, if that is okay with the other members of the council?” He looked at his brother and Dr. MacPhee.

  Both of the other men nodded in agreement.

  “See you all tomorrow, then.” The crowd rose from their chairs and started exiting the room. Leo Fitzpatrick stood with his son and glanced back at our little group. Fitzpatrick smiled and raised his hand with an awkward wave. As I waved back caught his son sneering at mine. I turned to Zach and blocked his view of Tyler.

  “Mom?” Zach said. “Were they talking about the place where you found Da – Mr. Canfield?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Very sad,” bemoaned Danny as he folded his hands in front and shook his head.

  “Could I go with you on Halloween and see where you found him?” Zach said.

  Here’s an issue you don’t find in the parenting magazines – do you take your child to the crime scene or not? I looked down at Zach, who was putting his schoolwork back into his bag, his eyes pleading with mine, a little smile playing on his lips.

  “Come on Mom, I would stay out of your way.”

  “No,” I told him.

  “You wouldn’t even know I was there. Besides, I could help carry in equipment. Right, Aunt Maggie?”

  Maggie just shook her head no. Zach had hit a tough crowd.

  “I’m going,” said Danny.

  Zach’s eyes grew wider in disbelief. “You’re letting Danny go but not me? That’s not fair.”

  We walked out the door to the parking lot. “Danny’s going because I can’t leave him alone overnight, and all of us are over there. I need him with me. He’s going to be up for a while and then sleep on a cot next to the NUTV van.”

  “You could put up two cots!” Zach said.

  “Cool,” said Danny. “It’ll be a sleepover!”

  “Did you forget you already have an obligation that evening?” I said. “You will only be across the field in the woods camping with the Scouts. If anything big happens, I’ll let you know, okay?” Zach looked at the ground sulking. I repeated, “Okay?”

  “Okay,” he muttered.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Zach continued to sulk as we walked. I glanced at my watch. It was nearly eight o’clock, and it was getting close to Zach’s bedtime. Thinking of my schedule for the next few days, I figured we would need to make one more stop before going home. We walked on the sidewalk to the back of the courthouse where the parking lot was.

  “So Zach,” I said, changing t
he subject. “How about you and I go down to SuperWally and look for a costume for you for the campout?”

  He uncrossed his arms and smiled slowly. “That would be cool,” he said, his voice rising a note with each word. He loved going to the local superstore, and he loved Halloween shopping, so the argument over the abandoned hospital vanished.

  “I know just what I want to be – an axe murderer.”

  “No.”

  “Mo-om,” Zach intoned as if a dying tea kettle, “why not?”

  “First of all, it’s too violent. You will be out there with little kids, and you could scare one of them.”

  Aunt Maggie, who had been following us with Danny, added, “Zachary, do you really want to go through the whole night with sticky red stuff all over?”

  “Yuck,” grimaced Danny.

  He droned on. “Mo-om, it’s Halloween. You think they’re going to see little fluffy blue bears all night?”

  We walked to the large glass doors and pushed them open into the muggy night.

  “I don’t know, but you don’t have to add to the scary stuff they will see,” I said.

  “How about you go as one of them super heroes?” Aunt Maggie said.

  “I don’t look good in tights.” Zach folded his arms back across his chest in frustration. I hated seeing him do that, because it was a mannerism Barry had been particularly fond of. How could he learn that gesture if he hadn’t ever met him?

  “Okay, how about going as something from a video game?” I asked.

  Zach nodded his head slowly in interest with this new idea. “Hmmm, maybe I could go as … a zombie.”

  “Oh dear, I guess we’re parked on the other side, dearie,” my aunt said. “Get your rest and don’t be too late picking out just the right getup.”

  “Bye Betsy. Bye Zach,” Danny said. We waved and walked on alone. In an effort to save the town money, the new mayor had deemed the parking lot lights be turned off at 8 p.m. The moonlight shed a weak illumination on the trees and bushes.

  “So what do you think of the zombie idea?” Zach continued as we walked in the blackness. A bush to the side stirred. I tried to focus into it through the darkness. The light was too dim for me to see if there was a person next to the bush. This whole paranormal business had me looking at anything that moved in the shadows. Zach had stopped waiting for me to answer. He continued making what he thought was an exceptional bargain.

  “They only have a little blood, you know, if they’ve just eaten someone’s brains or something,” he said as if to assure me.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said and shrugged. I had seen “Night of the Living Dead” as a kid and couldn’t get it out of my head for weeks.

  “So can I be a zombie? Please?” Zach put his hands together as if to beg for the last morsel of bread on the planet.

  “I’ll think about it.” I honestly didn’t have a strong enough reason to tell him no, but a zombie?

  I had pulled into a space that skirted a bank of trees next to the parking lot. As we approached it, I could see our headlights dimly lighting the shadowy trunks.

  “Oh no,” I said. Had I actually done this? Had I left my lights on?

  “What’s wrong, Mom?”

  I ran to the car and unlocked the door and hopped in. I put the key in the ignition and turned it, only to be greeted with the sound of the syncopated rhythm of a dying starter.

  Zach listened. “Mom, our car sounds sick. Try turning the key harder.”

  “And when was it that you got that certificate in automobile mechanics?”

  “Sorry,” he replied. He waited while I turned the key harder, to no avail. His mind still on the costume, Zach went on with our former conversation.

  “Okay, here’s another idea for Halloween.”

  “And what would that be?” I asked, sucking in my breath.

  “Get this,” he said. “I want to be a mad scientist.”

  I tried the key one more time, only to be greeted with the same noise, just a little weaker this time. “A mad scientist? That’s it? Well that’s doable.”

  I looked around the parking lot to see if other people were heading out to their cars. It seemed everyone had parked in the front this evening. I wondered if the shadow in the bushes had any jumper cables. I started calculating how late SuperWally would be open if I had to call a tow truck. Too bad I didn’t have a hint in my book for starting a car with a drained battery.

  “Of course we’ll need to find a chainsaw and some fake blood,” Zach continued.

  “Excuse me? Did you say a chainsaw? This is starting to sound surprisingly similar to the axe murderer idea.”

  “Uh, he is a MAD scientist after all.”

  “Couldn’t you just carry a test tube around or something? A chainsaw can get pretty heavy, you know.”

  “Mom! Not a real chainsaw!” He looked at me in shock. “I could hurt myself. I am a kid, you know. I mean a toy one. You can get one at the store with blood painted on it.”

  What has our society come to when a child could go to a store and pick up a bloody chainsaw toy? “I see. What about a white lab coat? Can I get one of those there as well?”

  “Nah. The only kinds of costumes they have are princesses and comic book guys.” Zach sighed and tapped his chin with his finger. “Maybe … we could ask Grandpa’s friend, Mr. Rivera. He is a coroner, after all. I’m sure he must have some mad scientist stuff somewhere.

  Knowing Art, he would probably say yes to the request. I just hoped he didn’t give Zach any real blood to put on the chainsaw.

  “You think you could ask him if he has one?” Zach asked.

  “Sure,” I answered.

  It was then I finally accepted my car was dead.

  “I think we’re stuck.”

  “Call Grandpa,” Zach said.

  “Zach, I can survive one day without calling Grandpa.”

  “Call Grandpa.”

  I grumbled and then pulled out my cell phone and dialed my dad’s number. After just a few admonishments, my dad told me that he was on his way out the door. Barry’s old car had died, even though I turned the key harder.

  Zach and I waited there, sitting in the darkened car. Zach pushed a little button on the side of his Scout watch to illuminate it. It was around 8:15. If my dad got here in the next few minutes, we would still have time to look around for a costume at SuperWally. I looked out at the shadows playing amid the bushes. A slight breeze ruffled the branches. Finally, the lights of my dad’s cruiser drove into the parking lot.

  I popped the hood as he exited his car with the jumper cables.

  “So you left your lights on?” he said, not feeling the need to start with the customary greeting of “hello.”

  “Uh, yeah, I really appreciate you coming out to help.”

  “Where else would I be when my daughter and grandson need my help?” Zach crawled out of his side of the car and tapped on my shoulder.

  “Is this a good time to tell you that I promised the Scouts that you would bring some of your homemade cookies to the campout?”

  I could not express in words how much this wasn’t a good time to tell me this. “You promised and then forgot? Oh Zach.”

  “Please, Mom. All the kids are depending on me. I told them that you bake great cookies. You can do it. You have time. Please?”

  “Ugh. I don’t know, Zach. I’ll have to work on them tonight.”

  “Thanks, Mom! You’re the best.”

  “Yep, that’s me.”

  My dad chuckled. “Sweetheart, did I ever tell you how nice it is to see all of the junk you did to me as a parent coming back to zing you with Zach?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Glad to make life so sweet for you, Dad.”

  Zach got inside the cruiser in the back seat and started bouncing up and down. Someone driving by must have thought my dad had just arrested the town’s most notorious kangaroo.

  “Grandpa, are you taking us to get a costume? Are you?” Zach yelled from the backseat.

&
nbsp; My dad raised his eyebrows, wondering what I had just gotten him into. “I hadn’t planned on it, sport.”

  “Mom and I were going to SuperWally to get me a costume. I need it for the campout this weekend.”

  “A costume at a campout? I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

  “It gets worse. He wants to go as something scary like an a guy with an axe.”

  My dad scowled. “Why would you want to go as one of the bad guys, Zach? How about you get on the right side of the law. Would you like to be a junior deputy for the one and only Pecan Bayou Police Department?”

  Zach’s eyes widened. “I could do that?”

  “Well, we don’t bestow that honor on just anyone, mind you, but I know your upstanding character, and I can speak for you, so the answer is yes.”

  “Cool!” He bounced even more.

  My dad looked around from under the hood of my car. “Okay, sweetheart. Try it.”

  I pressed on the gas in my car and heard it come to life again.

  “You’re going to need to replace that battery, Betsy,” my father said as he disconnected the cables from the positive and negative ports of the batteries. “What do you say Zach comes home with me and we’ll look at some of my old uniforms?”

  “Thanks, Grandpa! That would be excellent!”

  “Thanks, Dad,” I echoed.

  “And then maybe we could spill a little fake blood on the front,” Zach said softly, almost to himself.

  “NO!” My dad and I both answered in unison.

  “Tell you what. I’ll take Zach over to my house, find an old uniform for him, and he can just spend the night. That way you can dedicate all of your time to making those delicious cookies.”

  “Thanks, Dad.” I reached across to hug his shoulder, and he turned and smiled.

  “That is, if you save a few for me.”