by Nan Sampson
RESTLESS NATIVES
An Ellie Gooden Mystery
By Nan Sampson
Published by Last Chance Press
Copyright © July 2014 Nan Sampson
First E-Edition: July 2014
First Last Chance Press Edition: June 2015
Second Edition: April 2016
All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by Last Chance Press. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the author.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Cover Art © by Raven Blackburn
To Steve, Rachel, Ellen, Julie & Sue for always being there.
Chapter 1
Ellie Gooden cruised along Highway 151 with the windows rolled down, enjoying the blue cornflowers and tall purple thistles swaying in the hot, dry wind along the side of the rural Wisconsin road. Her ancient but sturdy VW Rabbit rattled along in time with Tom Petty singing ‘Free Falling’ on the radio and her short auburn curls whipped in the breeze. It felt more like July than May and she wished she’d gotten the VW’s air conditioner fixed before she’d left Chicago, but there had been no time for that.
Starting a brand new life in the picturesque little town of Horizon, far away from the tumult of Chicago, had been exactly what she needed to lift the malaise that had gripped her since the death of her parents. She’d been singing happy little tunes and grinning like an idiot for the past three days as she prepared to leave her condo in the city – happier than she’d felt in almost a year. But she felt a growing sense of dread the closer she got to her destination, completely unlike the depression she’d struggled with. Her friend Kate’s son would have called it a Disturbance in the Force. To Ellie, it felt like a cloud had settled over the sun, dimming the colors around her and pressing down on her joy like a sodden weight.
Damn it, there was no good reason for this. It was just fear. Fear at starting a business – a retail business at that – in a new town, in a down market. It was moving from the familiar environs of Chicago and its surrounding suburbs, which had been home all her life, to a small, rural town in the middle of nowhere. Her city friends thought she was nuts for moving away from the hustle and bustle of city life, her suburban friends thought her certifiable for dumping a successful career in marketing at a high profile company in the Loop.
Maybe they were all right, maybe in a matter of months, she’d go crawling back, tail between her legs. But Ellie was betting not. It was time to cut the cord with the past.
She pushed the fear aside, concentrating on what she knew, rather than what she couldn’t control. She’d developed a sound marketing plan. She had the capital she’d need to keep the lights on and the coffee flowing, for the first year and a half. There was no better time to do this – for any number of reasons, not the least of which was she was well and truly fed up with the corporate rat race and life in the big city.
She thought of her shop, of the shiny chrome fixtures, the cute white and black ice cream tables and the red lacquered swinging kitchen door she’d painted herself. Thought about all the work she’d already put in, redecorating what had once been the town’s diner, about opening the first crate of simple white elegant cups that she’d agonized over choosing, and hanging them on the hooks over the counter, feeling like a kid hanging the first Christmas ornaments. And she tried to bring back her idiot grin.
It nearly worked, until a bone-aching chill settled into the passenger seat of her car. Taking her right hand off the wheel, she held it over the cold spot. Gooseflesh prickled her arms and the hair stood up on the back of her neck.
“Grams?” She’d had visitations from her grandmother before, but those typically had been preceded by the smell of lavender. The thought of her grandmother, Rebecca Buchanan, caused her to touch the opal drop earrings that her grandmother had given her on her death bed.
Most of what she knew about spirits, and indeed about her own Wiccan spiritual path, had been learned at her Grandmother’s knee, much to her mother’s deep regret. Ellie had spent summers in Salem with her mother’s mother until she was fourteen, wildcrafting herbs in the hills behind her grandmother’s small cottage, celebrating esbats and sabbats with her grandmother’s coven, and living like a wild child on the beaches. Her Aunt Tabitha – Tabby to most – would visit during the summer as well, bringing with her all sorts of odd, eclectic people and what her Grandmother called new age nonsense. Tabby had been a magnet for spirits, however, so Grams had taught Ellie how to protect herself from their energy and influence. For the most part, spirits were benign, or confused, but some could be malicious.
Sitting in her car, feeling the bone deep chill of a presence from the other side right there in the passenger seat of her VW, she immediately created a sphere of protection around herself before opening up to try to sense the spirit.
A fury that was not hers swept over her, followed by an anguished wail, which rose and fell Doppler-like, in the confines of the small car. As the sound faded, the wave of emotion vanished, the cold abruptly dissipated, and the colors of the world grew bright again.
Now what had that been about? It wasn’t as though she’d never felt spirits before. A couple of them had even been frightening. But usually those were tied to a particular location – and she had trouble imagining a haunt on a road in the middle of nowhere.
She held her hand over the passenger seat again, steeling herself against the contact, but felt absolutely nothing now. Whatever it was, whoever it was, had gone.
Chapter 2
The rest of the thirty-minute drive passed uneventfully. The most notable thing she passed were peacefully grazing cows. Still, as she slowed down from her characteristic high speed to the posted and rigorously enforced 25mph speed limit at the town’s outskirts, the sense of dread returned.
She took a left off the highway onto Water Street and headed for the business district, the strip along Main Street where the bulk of the quaint, tourist-oriented shops were located.
Horizon, once a bustling mining town before the depression, had undergone a modern day renaissance in the mid-eighties. Now the main strip of town was a major tourist attraction for the area, filled with themed shops of all sorts, selling everything from tacky t-shirts and kitschy collector thimbles to high end apparel and local gourmet cheeses. What had been lacking, and what Ellie dreamed of providing, was the quintessential small town coffee shop, although with a suitably modern interpretation. And while she might serve the same kinds of beverages a barista in the ubiquitous urban coffee place might, she’d do it in a homey, comfortable atmosphere. That way, she would, hopefully, cater to both the tourists and the locals, thereby cementing her business profits both in and out of tourist season.
It was a Sunday morning, and just before nine o’clock. Main Street was quiet, with most of the locals at church, and the tourists still tucked up at The Birches, the local inn, under their handmade quilts. Ellie turned into the small alleyway that ran behind the shops on the north side of the street and parked in what she now called ‘her spot’, right beside the delivery door to her shop. With shaking fingers, she pulled out her set of keys and unlocked the back door.
It was quiet inside and while that wasn’t unusual, there was something about the quality of the quiet, an absence of an undefined characteristic that set her on edge. The lights were still off here in the back, both in the little room t
hat would be her office and in the storeroom right across the small back hall. Sun streamed in through the front windows, but because that light barely touched the gloom in the back it was easy to see the light coming from underneath the swinging door to the kitchen.
The former owner of the building that had once been the town’s diner years before was supposed to meet her here at 10:00. She’d half expected Artie to be early, and despite her feelings of foreboding, was almost relieved to see the light. Artie must already be here. He’d said he would have a surprise for her today and she’d wracked her brains trying to figure out what he had in mind. Artie Cullen was closing in on seventy, and considered to be the worst kind of curmudgeon by many of the younger townsfolk. But Ellie liked him, liked his straightforward manner and his intolerance for bull shit. He, along with her neighbors, the Moughs (pronounced like cows, she’d come to learn), and the Kemps, who owned the local historic Inn, were among the last few remnants of the commune that had flourished here in the late sixties and seventies. When the movement had crumbled, a handful of the residents had opted to stay on and continue the cottage industries they had started. Now the Moughs owned an organic dairy known locally as Mough’s Cows, the Kemps operated the up and coming inn, and Artie and his wife Helen had run the diner in town for nearly thirty years.
She strode over and pushed open the swinging door to the kitchen, smiling, hoping that Artie’s surprise wasn’t terribly ugly, as she’d feel obligated to hang it up. Stepping into the kitchen, she assumed a chiding tone. “Aren’t you supposed to be in church, Mr. Cullen?”
The kitchen was brightly lit, and sported new, stainless steel appliances and fixtures. The floor was brand new too – a smart black and white tile. And in the middle of that once gleaming surface was a chair upon which Artie Cullen sat. Or rather, on which he’d been tied. Trussed up.
He was covered from the neck down in something golden-brown and sticky. Adhering to the liquid mess was what had to be several hundred chickens’ worth of feathers. The floor around him was covered in both the sticky liquid and more feathers.
Ellie raced over to him, slipping once in the mess. His head hung forward and she knew before she got to him there was little point. He was gone. Still, she felt for a pulse, just to make sure. Despite the fact that he was still warm, she knew his spirit had already left his body.
Had that been the anguished wail in the car? Artie’s last psychic complaint?
She looked more closely at the body. She couldn’t immediately see any injuries. So perhaps he had died of shock – a heart attack in reaction to what had been done to him. But no, as she scanned down his body, she saw what looked like one of her shiny new kitchen knives protruding from the old man’s chest, disguised by syrup and a covering of feathers.
She staggered back a step, stumbled again in the sticky mess, landing on her ass in what she now knew from the smell to be pancake syrup. She felt queasy and faint and wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of there. Scrambling, she managed to get her feet under, then bolted from the room and out into the front of the shop, where the sun was shining and pedestrians were starting to appear on the street beyond the front window.
No, she thought, not again. She could not do this again.
She spent a moment tugging frantically at the front door, until she realized it was locked. Somehow she couldn’t flip the bolt, and stood there, rattling at it ineffectually, her heart hammering in her chest.
Finally, the door opened and she raced out into the street like a mad woman, not sure where to go, or what to do next. She spun around like a top wondering where in the hell the police station was, or even if Horizon had a police station. A woman about her own age came up to her and laid a hand on her arm.
“Are you okay?”
Ellie bit off a startled yelp. “Yes. Sorry, yes. But we’ve got to get the police.”
Concern was mixed with caution on the woman’s face. “Is something wrong? Are you okay?”
Ellie got control of her panic, the only benefit of a year’s worth of therapy. “Yes. I mean, I’m okay. But Artie – that is, Mr. Cullen, is not.”
“Artie? What happened? Where is he?”
She pointed back towards her new shop. “He’s in there. And he’s dead.”
Chapter 3
Ten minutes later, Ellie found herself ensconced at one of her own tables with the woman she’d run into in the street, while two officers from Horizon’s Police Department examined the crime scene in her kitchen. She’d had to run out to her car for a clean pair of jeans - she refused to sit on one of her brand new ice cream chairs when her butt was covered in syrup and now sat sipping a cup of tea the senior cop had set in front of her, not really tasting it. The other woman did the same, and it struck Ellie as obscenely civilized, given that there was what amounted to a tarred and feathered body no more than fifty feet away.
The young woman tucked shoulder length dark hair behind her ears. “I know it’s not the best time for introductions, but I am glad I ran into you.” She held out a small, well-manicured hand. “I’m Laura Lincoln. I own The Gilded Page, our local bookstore. I’ve been wanting to meet you ever since Terri Kohler told us you were moving to town.”
“Thanks. I think.” Ellie shook Laura’s hand. “Although I’m a little afraid of what Terri’s been saying.”
Laura smiled. “All good things. In addition to being our local real estate maven and one-woman Welcome Wagon, she’s one of the officers of our little Business Owner’s Association. We’re all thrilled about the coffee shop. We’ve needed something like this for years, but until Artie decided to sell up and move to New Mexico…” She paused, looked back towards the kitchen. “Oh, this is just awful. Someone needs to call his daughters before the rumor mill gets hold of this.”
Ellie had heard of small town rumor mills but figured they only really existed in old episodes of The Andy Griffith Show or Murder She Wrote. Still, she pulled out her cell phone. “The phone in the shop isn’t hooked up yet – do you want to use my cell?”
Laura was already reaching for hers, talking, Ellie thought, primarily to herself. “I’ll have to call Patti – I think the girls are staying out at the farm.” She stood up. “Excuse me just a minute.”
Moving over to the window, Laura turned her back on Ellie, who gripped her cup of tea harder. Her hands ached with sudden cold, and the hot cup did nothing to warm them.
This was not the way she wanted to start her new life. She’d left Chicago to get away from this kind of thing. Murder – the desecration of a human life – wasn’t supposed to happen in little backwater towns like Horizon. She thought she’d be safe here.
Images from the past, images of her own parents’ lifeless bodies painted in blood flooded her brain and her hand shook so violently that hot tea splashed out over her hand. The shock caused her to drop the cup, which fell to the tiled floor and shattered into pieces.
“Damn it.” She jumped up and took a step back, feeling bits of ceramic crunch under her shoes.
“Here. Why don’t you step over this way and I’ll give you a hand.”
She looked up to find an older gentleman in a blue cop’s uniform standing on the opposite side of the table. His hair was salt and pepper and there were creases in his deeply tanned skin. Hazel eyes peered at her, the expression behind them carefully benign as he reached for her arm with latex-gloved hands.
She sidestepped to the left and dropped her gaze to the mess of the floor. “Damn it. My cup!” She knelt down and picked up a few of the larger pieces, feeling as though more than just the cup had shattered. She sucked in a breath as she cut herself on a sharp edge. “Blessed Lady!”
She felt a hand on her arm and jerked away automatically. She would have landed on her backside and likely cut herself again if the cop’s grip on her arm hadn’t tightened at the last moment.
“Should’ve listened the first time. I’m Chief Gruetzmacher. You must be Ellie Gooden that we’ve heard so much about. Here now, c
ome round over this side, let’s get you to some running water. The water is turned on in this place now, isn’t it?”
She nodded, feeling like a fool, more embarrassed than hurt. She teared up which made her even angrier at herself. “Yes, but I’m fine. It’s just a— “
“Flesh wound?” The man chuckled as he guided her around the table and behind the counter to the sink.
“You read minds.” She glanced up at him, uncomfortable with the way he studied her as he forced her hand under the cold stream. Like a cop, she thought. Carefully this time, she pulled her arm away. “That must come in handy for a cop.”
He didn’t answer at first, but turned off the faucet and found one of her new tea towels hanging from a ring. “It does make getting confessions a whole lot easier. Here, wrap this around tight. That’s deeper than it looks. You got bandages?”
“Under the cupboard there. It’s not that deep.”
He rummaged around, found the first aid kit and pulled out an adhesive strip. “Been a cop for nearly thirty years, most of that in Chicago. I know when a wound needs stitches. Now hold still.”
He inspected her hand, presumably for other cuts then stripped off the wrapper of the bandage. He wasn’t gentle as he pulled the bandage tight around her finger, then re-wrapped the towel around it even as blood seeped out through the little pores in the plastic. “Hold that up now, and keep that towel wrapped tight.”
Her tone grew acidic. “Oh, yes, sir.” It was almost reflex now with cops.
Gruetzmacher gave her a look. “You always had trouble with authority figures?”
She took a breath, mentally counted to ten. “I’m sorry. I’m just upset. This has been a helluva day already and it’s not even ten o’clock.”
“Probably gonna get worse. Why don’t we have a seat for a moment?” He gestured to a different table. “I’ve got a few questions for you.”