Behind the Boater's Cover-Up

by Etta Faire

  I went on. “You see everyone on the boat was in the middle of staging the deaths of Dwight and Frederick Linder. Dwight was involved in swindling the town out of millions with his bogus investment and was about to be investigated for securities fraud. Bill was helping his good friend out of the mess by helping him out of the country.”

  I paused long enough to see my new customer base playing on their phones by the buffet. Great.

  I continued like they were still interested. I needed to get back to ghosts breaking windows and fast. “And when Nettie and Gloria witnessed these men staging the Linders’ deaths on the boat, they were killed. And everyone else covered it up because Bill Donovan wanted them to.” I turned toward the lawyer. “That’s the end of the story.”

  The room was silent, until the lawyer stood up. “Well then, I guess we will see you in court.”

  “Lies. Lies. Lies,” Mayor Bowman yelled, loosening the tie that seemed to be strangling his thick neck. “I will sue you for everything you have.”

  I knew that man already thought he deserved everything I had: the house, the inheritance, probably not the curse, though.

  Mayor Wittle staggered through the crowd, smacking chairs on his way from the back of the room, knocking the empty ones over. His face was as vacant as a stuffed fisherman. When he reached me, I backed away and scanned the room for some sort of a weapon.

  With shaky hands, he reached for my neck, and I screamed, then realized he was actually reaching for my mic. I breathed a sigh of relief and gave it to him.

  “Is Nettie really here? I… I felt her. If she’s here, I want her to know I’m sorry,” he said, his voice quivering worse than Mildred’s had been.

  “Sit down, Darren,” his wife yelled from her seat. “And for God’s sake, shut the hell up.”

  He didn’t seem to hear her. “I know she only made out with me that night ‘cause she thought I was the richest kid on the lake…”

  My face dropped. I wasn’t expecting a confession.

  He went on, sputtering each syllable. “I had no idea that… stuff on the boat was going to happen. She knows that, right?”

  “Get a hold of yourself, Darren,” Myles yelled from across the room.

  Darren shot back. “Shut up, Myles. I trusted you. You said nothing was gonna happen. We would all be okay… Then you and your dad beat up the girls, threw them overboard… ran them over with the boat. And then Mr. Linder was actually murdered. Who knew that?”

  “No one tells Myles Donovan to shut up,” Dan from the paper said. He picked up a chair and lifted it over his head. Caleb got up, arms folded over his police uniform, and Dan put the chair back down again.

  Mayor Wittle continued. “We were supposed to be staging deaths. That’s it. Freddie’s and Mr. Linder’s… I didn’t know there was a real murder…” His voice cracked as he talked. “I never knew…”

  I leaned over Rosalie so my voice would pick up through her mic since I wasn’t wearing one anymore. “Actually,” I said. “I think you did know, Mayor Wittle.”

  The college kids at the buffet stopped eating and playing on their phones and looked over.

  Rosalie yanked her mic off her seance dress and handed it to me so fast part of a moon pulled off of its seam. “Damn,” she said, her voice ringing out before I took over. “Damn. Damn. Damn.”

  Chapter 33

  A murder so quaint

  The room seemed extra quiet to me now. I had no idea what libel entailed or how to defend myself against it in court, but I knew I had to do what was right.

  I put the mic up to my mouth and continued. “At least one person onboard the Donovan yacht that night knew there was more than staging going on, and I think that person was you.”

  The crowd gasped.

  Mayor Wittle went on. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Did your ghosts tell you that?” He chuckled to the crowd like they were suddenly going to be on his side.

  “They didn’t need to. But I will take some ghostly help to cue up Mildred’s diary entry to the day the shed burned down.”

  I waited. Nothing happened, but everybody’s heads turned this way and that to see if I was off my rocker.

  I covered my mic and yelled for Jackson under my breath.

  He was rolling his eyes when he appeared. “Honestly, the things I do for you. Mildred’s right there with her diary. She could easily read it herself…”

  I sent the lazy ghost mental daggers until he picked up the recorder and hovered on the table with it, half-heartedly moving it this way and that in front of him, kind of like a sign spinner five minutes before quitting time. “Oooooh,” he said like anyone could hear him. “No strings.”

  It was enough to get the college kids’ attention, though. One dropped his plate of garlic shrimp when he looked up and saw the recorder dancing across the table over to the mic stand.

  Jackson pushed “play” once he got there, and Mildred’s voice shot out through the mic, the same entry about the shed as before.

  “He denied getting moonshine and even had the nerve to say no one else was in that shed, but I could hear Myles sneezing on the other side of the door. Freddie must think I’m stupid.

  “And this time, they’ve gone too far. Apparently, those two killed a deer off-season. Freddie admitted it. He didn’t even care. He said it was an accident, that he was just shooting at cans and trees, but who knows? I told him he doesn’t own this country club so he needed to stop acting like it, just because he’s rich and his family was one of the founders. I told him I’d had enough. I was going to tell on him.

  “And then the shed burned down. I guess he showed me.”

  Jackson clicked the recorder off and I took over. “Hours before the shed burned down, there was something bloody inside it. According to Ethel Peterton’s notes, the only things recovered from that shed after it burned were a metal welder’s mask, a blow torch and some tools, including an ax.”

  I clicked on the photo of that page of her notebook on my laptop and it appeared on the screen. “As you can see, arson was suspected.”

  “I knew you had that notebook,” Grace said, hitting her husband’s bear scratch.

  I ignored her. “And, Mayor Wittle, your family had access to welding equipment. Isn’t that right?”

  “A… a lot of people did,” he replied.

  “But how many do you suppose also had a weird allergy to pine? That was you that night, not Myles, sneezing in the shed. Mildred’s father infused his moonshine with juniper, so you were allergic to the stuff you were supposed to be getting drunk off of. That’s why you were sneezing in the closet the night of the party too. You and Freddie killed Mr. Linder in the shed then burned it down to cover your tracks. Later on, you threw his head into the lake as proof of the drowning. Why not? You were already staging the death. Freddie’s body was never recovered because Freddie was in the Bahamas by the time his father’s remains were discovered…”

  Mayor Wittle didn’t say anything, wasn’t cracking like I wanted him to, so I went on. I steadied my eyes on his. “You killed Dwight Linder. Because you thought you deserved better. You deserved to be a part of the rich circle, and I’m guessing you might have thought you were even born into it.”

  I checked through the photos on my laptop, clicking on the one I took from Mayor Wittle’s office of him and his family. “Funny. You don’t really look like a Wittle. But you look an awful lot like Freddie and Eric Linder.”

  I didn’t let him respond yet. “You killed him because you thought you deserved to be an insider and one of the richest boys on the lake, and you weren’t.”

  Mr. Wittle shook his head. “No…no. It wasn’t like that. I told Myles about it. He knows. It was Freddie. He killed his dad.”

  I sat back down in my chair, exhausted. I knew that mouse would crack eventually. I didn’t know it’d take so many cookies to get him there, though. I handed Rosalie her mic and whispered that I was done. I didn’t hear applause. Rosalie had been right. The
re was no standing ovation this time. The town hadn’t rallied around me to hear the truth. It was like they didn’t care. Or didn’t believe it.

  “Thank you all for coming,” my boss said. “But that concludes the seance.”

  Her voice was barely audible over the pandemonium erupting around us.

  Mayor Wittle was still confessing. “Freddie said his dad already had everything set up. The plane tickets, fake IDs, offshore accounts. They didn’t need him anymore, and he wasn’t a good man. He threatened Mrs. Linder with an ax…”

  “Shut up,” Mayor Bowman yelled as he tackled the other 80-year-old mayor, wrestling the mic from his hands while the Donovans tried to open the front door once more, their lawyers right behind them.

  Dan picked up his chair, but this time, Caleb couldn’t stop him. It soared past the fighting mayors and crashed against one of the windows.

  The glass cracked, little pieces clanking along the hardwood by our feet.

  “We will not be paying for that,” Rosalie said calmly into her mic. “That was clearly a living human who did that.”

  Cold wind streamed steadily through the now broken parts of the window. Paula stood up. “Sheriff Bowman, handle this, please.”

  Caleb seemed almost frozen, unsure of what to do to get the peace. They were all his friends and family. He bent down to take Mayor Wittle by the arm, but the two older men were still wrestling, egged on by yelling and hooting outsiders. The college kids had circled the aging fighters like they were watching a mosh pit form at a Barry Manilow concert.

  Nettie raised her arms out by her side and two chairs rose with them. The chairs flew across the room at the same time. One smacked Myles across the side of his shoulder. The other chair landed squarely by Mayor Wittle’s feet.

  With a swirl of her hand, Gloria wrapped one of the mystic scarves from the ceiling around Mayor Bowman’s leg and yanked him out of his dog pile with Mayor Wittle. The thick man rose into the air by his leg, screaming and kicking the whole time. Then she released him so he landed hard against the floorboards.

  “Tell Tony that’s from the troll friend,” she said. I didn’t even try to tell him. I no longer had a mic, and it was too loud anyway. Smoke drifted around me, and things got instantly quiet.

  Someone was burning sage.

  I’ve never heard Paula’s voice louder, and I’ve heard that woman get pretty loud. It practically vibrated off the walls. “Enough! If you are living, go home now or you will be arrested. This party is over. And if you are dead, I have burning sage. I’m not dealing with any more broken windows or chairs or anything else tonight.”

  I wondered if she was mad enough to turn polar bear. I looked for Hulk-like signs as she waved the bundle of sage all around the living room. Ghosts disappeared right and left.

  Slowly, I walked over to her. “And you said you didn’t believe in any of this sage-burning hocus pocus…”

  “Still don’t,” she replied, the house quieter now. “But it’s cold enough.”

  “For a polar bear?”

  “That was your last seance at my place,” she said, staring me right in the eyes, making me regret my big mouth.

  I sat down and cupped my head in my hands, regretting a lot of things as I listened to people complain about the seance on their way out.

  “I’ve never been to a party where old people fought before,” one of the college kids said.

  “I totally saw the strings when that recorder floated above the table,” another chimed in.

  “And when the chairs flew around. Lame.”

  So much for a new customer base. It was my worst seance yet, if it could even have been considered a seance. It was more like an interrogation mixed with a senior-citizen brawl. The Purple Pony was never going to make money until summer rolled around again.

  A very light, smattering of applause came from a dark corner in the back of the room. I squinted in its direction.

  It was June.

  “Thank you,” she said when she reached me. “I have always wondered what happened to my sister. If you see Gloria, you tell her Bug says, ‘No more waiting. We got ‘em this time.’”

  Chapter 34

  Return of the Date Killers

  Lil Mil skidded to a perfect hockey-stop in front of me, the show-off, while her bestest friend, Clarisse, spun around like she was in front of an audience. I blinked into the sunlight, thankful for a little warmth as we went into spring.

  “If the weather continues like this,” Justin said, taking off his jacket. “We won’t be able to skate on the lake too much longer.”

  “Damn,” I replied, snapping my fingers. I knew I was making my ice-skating face again.

  I looked up in the trees, wondering what else spring had in store for me. New beginnings. New awakenings. Taking sides, whatever that meant.

  Parker and Lila laughed behind us, struggling to catch up to their kids. Parker’s three-year-old was almost faster than he was now.

  I didn’t trust Lila one bit. No matter how many times Justin told me the woman wasn’t really following me around town, I still got the impression that, yeah, she was. The Donovans were trying to control things, and they wanted me to know about it.

  Justin squeezed my hand and I almost slipped on the ice. I snuggled into him, just listening to the sound of his breathing as he skated, enjoying the warmth of his body.

  “Wittle admitted everything,” he said. “Not just on camera at the bed and breakfast a couple weeks ago, but he made an official statement yesterday. He was pretty freaked out at the seance.”

  “Me too,” I admitted. “Did they find Freddie Linder and his family?”

  He shook his head no. “Won’t be long, though. Not sure what’s going to happen, but everyone’s lawyering up. Good job figuring it out.”

  From what I’d heard, there probably wasn’t enough evidence to convict anyone, except Darren Wittle, and only because he’d confessed.

  Someone grabbed me from behind and I almost fell on the ice. I turned around, fully expecting to see Mrs. Carmichael again. It was Lynette.

  “Getting straight-A’s this semester,” she said. “They arrested Dan Herndon this morning. And guess who got it all on video. Thanks to my many connections on the police force. Okay, just the one.”

  She looked over at my boyfriend and I smiled at him.

  Justin nodded. “Truck was registered to his son-in-law, bear scratches just like in the report. They think he just wanted to scare you into not being so nosy.”

  “By almost killing me?” I shook my head. “At least that crazy good-ole-boys network was finally taken down a notch.”

  “This round, maybe,” Justin said.

  He waited until Lynette had skated out of earshot to add, “But I have to admit, I was very impressed with the investigation. I can see why ghosts come to you to solve their cases. You and your ex do good work.”

  Jackson suddenly appeared by our side. “Smarter than the average bear,” he said. “I’ll give him that.”

  I shot my ex a look.

  He waved his hand, dismissively. “Go on. Go on. Enjoy yourselves like I’m not even here. God forbid I should have some fun.” He disappeared, but I knew he was still there. The date killer.

  I also knew how hard it must’ve been for Justin to admit that. Having your girlfriend live with the man she left you for twelve years ago was hard enough, but add in the fact the guy was a ghost and there was nothing you could do about it, and that was probably more than most men would take on.

  Passing the same area I’d lost my hat last month, I thought I heard it again. The growling. I searched the trees around us for any signs of the large-beaked birds that growled, remembering the way Clyde had laughed at Gloria, the way the dog had bit through the birds, breaking them in half. A chill shot up my spine along with the feeling that something just wasn’t right.

  “We should go,” I said to Justin.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, let’s go back to my place a
nd vedge out.”

  “Rosalie’s recipe strands still holding up?” he asked.

  “In all the best places,” I said as his radio crackled.

  Christine’s voice came over it. “Justin, you there?”

  He kissed my cheek and put the walkie talkie to his mouth. “Go ahead, Christine.”

  “Caleb wants you to swing by old George’s barber shop. Calm him down.”

  “I’m supposed to be off tonight.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. Old George called saying something about a couple bear skins strung up on poles out behind his shop.” She hesitated. “Probably won’t take long. I’m sure it’s someone’s idea of a joke, but can you check on that?”

  “How many?” he asked.

  “What do you mean how many? You asking how many bear skins? I’m sure I don’t know that. No wait. I see it here. Three.”

  “Is the number significant?” I asked, leaning up so I could try to hear better.

  “Probably nothing,” he replied, skating off. He turned back around, the wind blowing his dark hair along his shoulders. “You okay if I leave you here?” he yelled to me.

  “Yeah, I can get a ride home with someone. Parker’s here.”

  He looked at me sideways like he didn’t trust Parker as much as I did. But he turned and skated off.

  “My. My,” Jackson said, suddenly appearing with his arms crossed while we both watched my boyfriend leave. “Parker Blueberg. You would think he’d have objected to that one. I would have.”

  I bit my lip and ignored my ex-husband’s very good point. Justin did seem jealous of Parker.

  Justin rushed across the lake toward his truck so fast he slipped a couple of times on the ice and he was an expert skater. My stomach dropped as I suddenly realized why that number might’ve been significant. Why Justin was in such a hurry.

  Shelby’s shapeshifting fiancé, Bobby, and his two brothers were still missing. I wondered now if they’d just been found. Another possible sign from the scrapbook.