Beneath the Mall of Madness (A Jaspar Windisle Mystery Book 1)

by A. D. Folmer

  “Now that’s a strong binding,” she said. “I guess it doesn’t have inserts.” She looked at us. “What? I meant it when I said old textbooks aren’t valuable. If you took this to a college bookstore, you’d be lucky to get a quarter for it.”

  We found Obadiah’s workshop in the attic. Unlike Fiona’s, you needed a ladder to get into the attic of this house. The steps of the ladder were unusually wide. You could see that one side was more worn than the other. It must have been because of the wooden leg. The workroom wasn’t neat by anyone’s standards. Fortunately, it wasn’t as packed with junk as the other rooms in the house. The room was full of maps; piled on a table in the middle of the room, stacked on the floor, and crammed into shelves on the walls. Some of them were of the various pipes and power lines under the town; most of them were tunnels or plans for tunnels.

  “There’s a copy of this at the station,” Earl said, stretching one out on the table in the middle of the room. “Ours is on dry erase paper so we can edit it.”

  “Are they supposed to be ley lines?” Cassandra asked.

  “No,” Steve said.

  “None of the digging equipment is up here,” Earl noted.

  “It wouldn’t be,” I said. “He’s not going to tunnel out of the attic. Maybe it’s in the basement.”

  “It doesn’t look like any tunnels go under the house,” Steve said, looking at the map. “Most of these go under the streets.” He frowned. “Don’t you ever worry about that? I knew there would be one or two tunnels, but this shows as much tunnel as dirt.”

  “They always seemed solid to me,” Earl said. “You’d have to be inside one to understand.”

  “Wait, these are tunnels?” Cassandra said.

  “Yes,” I told her. “The one we’re interested in isn’t on this map. All of these run underneath the town.”

  “Maybe there’s another map,” Earl said. “If he wanted to keep a secret putting it on the town map wouldn’t be the best idea. He brought this map with him when he updated ours.”

  “These are real tunnels?” Cassandra said.

  “That’s right.”

  “This is what’s been messing up our readings!” She exclaimed. “We thought these lines were a sign that the machine was broken!”

  “That happened in an election once,” I said. “Some scientists made a computer program to predict the winner, and when it didn’t give them the answer they expected, they decided not to publicize the results. The computer was correct, but their public lack of faith in their machine set their program back for years.”

  “I heard about that too,” Steve said. “Was it one of Franklin Roosevelt’s?”

  “That would have been pathetic,” I said. “But no. I’m pretty sure it was before him. Or after. One of the two.”

  “You’re saying I should have had more faith in my machine, is that it?” Cassandra said.

  “All of these tunnels have exits,” I noted. “You could have followed one of the lines to the end. You know, I can’t remember which election it was. Now it’s going to bug me.”

  “You could have tried digging,” Earl said. “Hitting concrete would have told you something.”

  “You have no idea how much of a pain this machine is to use,” Cassandra said. “If I had to follow it for-” she traced a line with her finger- “three miles to verify its findings I’d go mad.”

  “Aren’t there already machines that are better, then?” Steve asked. “I’m sure I’ve hired people who’ve used them and they had one in Jurassic Park. It was temperamental, but it only took a few seconds to use.”

  “That one was for dinosaurs,” Cassandra said. “This one is for psychometric geological phenomenon. It’s completely different.”

  “So, you’re testing a machine that searches for psychic rocks?” Earl asked.

  “More or less,” Cassandra said.

  “How useful do you expect this machine to be?” I asked her.

  “Very,” she said. “Like I told you, it’s reliable in the lab. If we could get it working in the field, we could go to sites like Stonehenge and determine if the rocks themselves have psychic properties.”

  I didn’t ask her any more questions. A machine that might be able to confirm the possibility of the presence of magic rocks did not sound useful to me. And while it was interesting that her machine had located the tunnels Obadiah and his predecessors seemed to have done the actual digging by hand, not with magic.

  ***

  We searched the maps and journals for any trace of a tunnel out of town. There was a lot of stuff that would have interested a historian. In addition to digging new tunnels, Obadiah had spent time improving old tunnels or blocking them off. One of his journals mentioned tunnels that intersected with his, and hearing strange noises in the dark. Rather than investigate, he had begun lining the walls of his tunnels with concrete. I admire that sort of practical thinking. I also made a note to not go walking in the woods alone. I was also rethinking my position on owning a gun.

  “Shouldn’t there be older stuff here?” Steve asked after an hour or so of rifling through documents didn’t reveal any new information. “If tunnel digging runs in this guy’s family there should be maps and journals older than Obadiah.”

  “Maybe the sister-in-law thought they were valuable and took them,” I said.

  “Or maybe they’re in the hoard,” Earl suggested.

  “You mean we’ll actually have to go through that stuff?”

  “You were going to have to anyway,” I reminded Steve. “Anything magical in that mess is yours, remember. And I won’t be able to spot it.”

  “I didn’t know it would be an issue,” he confessed. “He sounded like the kind of guy who wouldn’t own much of anything. His sister-in-law also seems to be the sort of person who would have sold anything of worth.”

  “You met her?”

  “I spoke to her briefly on the phone. The sale itself went through a realtor.”

  “Maybe there was a chest of treasure in the living room and the rest of the house didn’t seem worth her time.”

  “I doubt it. Something’s not right about this. Look, this map case has got to be more valuable than those suits. You can’t tell me it wouldn’t be worth the time and effort to dust it off and sell it. She didn’t even try to get into the attic.”

  “After everything that’s happened this week, this is what doesn’t seem right to you?” Steve shrugged.

  “It might be important.”

  “Maybe she was involved in his death and feels guilty,” Earl said.

  “I hope not. That would be a nightmare,” Steve said.

  “How so?” Cassandra asked.

  “If she murdered Obadiah then she couldn’t legally inherit his estate, which leads to all kinds of questions about the sales she made. Even if we’re in the clear, the real heir could tie things up in court for years.”

  “Things haven’t been going well for you this week, have they?” Earl said.

  “I should have gone into stock trading,” Steve lamented. “Or drug running. It would have been less stressful.”

  “Cheer up,” I said. “She might have found his dead cat collection in the fridge, and not had the stomach to try the rest of the house.”

  “The fridge is gone,” Cassandra said.

  “You think so?” Steve asked.

  “Sure,” I told him. “Obadiah didn’t think she was involved. Unless she bursts into the police station to confess, there’s nothing linking her to his death.”

  “An idle suspicion isn’t enough to run an investigation on,” Earl agreed. “Especially since the deceased died of natural causes over a year ago. There was an autopsy at the time so exhuming him wouldn’t give us any new information.””

  “I’ve had some experience with hoarding behavior,” Cassandra said. “If he did collect dead cats there might be more in the basement. We should check it out.”

  ***

  We did. His basement was really a storm cellar. I�
�d never seen one in this part of the world. You had to go outside to get into it, and the entrance was a hatch built into the ground.

  “I’ll stay up here while you three investigate,” Earl said. He was smiling as he said it, but he was scanning the surrounding trees.

  “Why?” Cassandra wanted to know.

  “I’ve just got a bad feeling,” he said. “Y’all have fun down there. Tell me how it goes.”

  Steve went down first since it was his house now. There were no dead cats or any other type of pets. Sparks traced a line of dead things in a solid line around the cellar, but white powder along the walls explained that. It seemed this house had an ant problem.

  I was glad I had Sparks around to sense the dead because otherwise I would have taken one look into that cellar and climbed back out. The inside of the storm cellar looked like a car serial killer’s trophy room. Mufflers and AC units were hanging from hooks on the ceiling. There was a row of toolboxes on one wall and a long table in the middle of the room with a deconstructed engine spread out over it.

  “How many obsessive hobbies can one man have?” I asked the universe in general.

  “What the fuck is this?” Cassandra asked.

  “It’s a Cobra, an old Cadillac, a . . .Gremlin . . .”

  “Isn’t a Cobra a nice car?” She asked. “Maybe this stuff is worth something.” She ducked hanging car parts to investigate the back of the cellar. “There are parts from at least six different cars here.”

  “This door isn’t from a Cobra. It’s one of those weird ones that flips up.” Steve said.

  “That style is called gull wings,” Cassandra said.

  “I’m not much of a car person,” Steve said.

  “We’ll have to ask Earl if the bodies of these cars ever made an appearance,” I said. “It’s possible that someone out there would like to buy an engine for the gutted car they just bought.”

  “Sure, if they want to build it themselves,” Cassandra said. “Actually, I could take a crack at it. I try to avoid working on expensive machines my life depends on, but I’ve got some experience as a mechanic.”

  “Didn’t you say that was why you skipped that tour?”

  “Yes. If I left my colleagues alone with a blown fuse, they’d stick a penny in it and congratulate themselves on a job well done, then act confused when something expensive melted.”

  Steve couldn’t walk through the hubcap mobile without getting hit in the face. The house had been designed and decorated by someone closer to my height, so I was short enough to walk under it. And since I was looking for something vaguely hubcap shaped-

  “Hey Steve, I think I’ve found a magical thing for you!” I said. “I was wrong about the key being a hex wrench.”

  “Oh?”

  I showed him the flat hexagonal piece of metal. It had shapes carved into it that were too occult to be from a car company, and it had jewels embedded in one side. There were three notches set into it that made it look like a hubcap if you were in the dark and not expecting it.

  “It’s a key that can be attached to a giant hex wrench.”

  “Awesome,” Steve said. He pulled it off the ceiling and turned it over in his hands. “You’re right, the metal is special and the markings are magical. So you couldn’t just make a copy. To open whatever this unlocks, you’d need this specific key.”

  He patted me on the head. “Good job.” I slapped his hand away.

  “You would have found it eventually if you didn’t get sick of cleaning and sell all this stuff as scrap.” Steve laughed.

  “No way. I would have hired people to toss everything and burn the house down before I went through this crap myself.”

  “What is that a key to?” Cassandra asked.

  “One of the tunnels,” I said.

  “That’s an inconvenient size for a key,” she said. “Did you see how the weight was pulling its hook out of the ceiling?” I started to explain the hidden tunnel to her, but I was interrupted by gunfire.

  Some of the shots sounded like they were being fired directly above us, but most of them sounded far away. Earl must have been shooting at someone, and he sounded outgunned. Cassandra screamed. Steve stuffed the key inside his jacket. I searched for a place to hide. I didn’t find any. All the stuff in this room was either flush against the wall or hanging from the ceiling.

  There were six shots close enough to be painfully loud, and then silence. I waited for another shot for what seemed like an eternity. I headed to the stairs. So as not to appear completely useless I grabbed a tire iron on my way up.

  “What are you doing?” Cassandra whispered. She was under the work bench. I don’t know what she was thinking; anyone coming down the stairs would see her instantly.

  “I’m going to ask Earl what happened,” I told her.

  “What if he’s dead?”

  “He isn’t. He fired the last shot.” I shoved the hatch open and emerged tire iron first. Sure enough, Earl was standing to the side, grinning like the Cheshire Cat.

  “It was just a local group of cultists,” he said. “Don’t worry. That type rarely comes back for seconds.”

  “Just a local group? How many cults do you have running around?”

  “Almost as many as we have groups of fringe scientists,” he replied. “These were from the Cult of Conterminous Space. I only got seven of them. The rest scattered while I was reloading.”

  “You only fired six shots.”

  “I’m just that good.”

  “Is that why you stayed up here?”

  “Yup. There’s more cult activity up here at the cliffs than in town. They stay away from Fiona’s place, for the most part because she has booby traps, and they didn’t bother Obadiah much when he was alive, probably because he dressed like a pirate. When they heard about the sale, they must have seen an opportunity to move in.”

  I could see that. If you were in a town like this and believed in the occult, a wooden-legged pirate living alone with no visible means of support added up to nothing but trouble.

  “So much for making this a vacation home,” Steve said. “How can anyone live here?”

  “Like I said, it isn’t so bad in town. Most of the tourists aren’t expecting to find anything, so they don’t look that hard.”

  “Should we check on Fiona?” I asked. “Not all that gunfire was close by.”

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” Earl said. “She deals with worse all the time.”

  “Who’s Fiona?” Cassandra asked. “And how can you be so casual about killing this many people?”

  “It was them or me, ma’am,” Earl said. “Come to think of it, it is near lunchtime. She might need some company.”

  “We could ask her about the magic hubcap,” I said. “She’s a wizard.”

  “Hey! I’m a wizard too,” Steve said.

  “Yes, but you’re always saying that you just dabble. Do you even know what kind of writing it is?” Before he could answer I specified “other than ‘the magic kind.’”

  “No.”

  “Then it can’t hurt to ask someone else.”

  “Wait a minute,” Cassandra said. “What about these dead people? You’re a cop; you can’t just ignore them.”

  Personally, I was sick and tired of crime scenes, but she was right. Earl rolled his eyes.

  “In the case of cultists,” he said, “we let nature take her course. In these parts documenting the ones we gun down just calls attention to the ones we don’t, who go missing after meddling with forces they don’t understand. Besides, if the Cult of Conterminous Time finds them first, they’ll hide the bodies for us. If they’re still here when we get back, I’ll start proceedings.”

  “The cult of what?” I asked.

  “It used to be the Cult of Conterminous Space and Time,” Earl explained, “but they had a falling-out years ago and schismed. Now they spend most of their time attacking each other. Just avoid befriending any middle-aged cultists you meet in the woods and you’ll be able to st
ay out of it.”

  “This town is awful,” Cassandra said.

  “Did you really think an occult convergence would be sunshine and kittens?” Earl asked. “Now, get the magic doohickey and let’s get lunch.”

  Chapter 14: Very few people are willing to join a group with a 75% fatality rate

  Fiona was interested in the magic doohickey, but she was more excited to see me.

  “Of course you can all have lunch,” she said. “And then you can help me clean the attic.”

  “Is anything wrong?” Earl asked.

  “No, of course not.” Fiona pulled me to the side. “I can hear them,” she whispered to me as she helped me out of my jacket. “You woke them up, so help me get rid of them.”

  “Sure,” I said. “But you shouldn’t be able to do that if they’re dead.”

  “I told you they get stronger the more of them there are,” she said. “It took all of my self-control not just to make piles of cheese for lunch.”

  There was a definite theme. Earl gave her a few suspicious looks as we ate toasted cheese sandwiches and cheesecake brownies.

  “These markings do seem familiar,” she said when she examined the key. “Though they’re not in any book I own.”

  “Are you sure?” Steve asked.

  “Do they look familiar to you, Earl?” Fiona asked.

  “Now that you mention it,” Earl said, leaning forward to study the key, “they look a lot like the signs in the tunnels.”

  “Well that’s helpful,” Steve said. “We already know it’s for a tunnel.”

  “Now we can figure out if it means anything,” Fiona said. “The signs in the tunnels do.” She turned the key around a few times. “I think it says abandon all hope.”

  “Neat,” I said. “I’m glad we solved the mystery. Let’s get started on your attic so I can get out of here.”

  “Get out of here?” Steve echoed. “But this is just the start.”

  “No, it sounded like the end to me.”

  “We have to find out why we should abandon hope.”

  “A variety of possibilities have occurred to me,” I said. “I don’t like any of them.”

  “Abner and Obadiah went down there and nothing happened to them.”