by Eva Pohler
Just then the basement stairs creaked and moaned, and a girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen years of age, shouted, “Who are you, and what are you doing down here?”
With her back to the girl, Sue quickly stuffed the thirty pages of the affidavit into her bra.
“We’re the Merry Maids,” Ellen said.
“Then who are the ladies upstairs actually cleaning?” the girl asked, full of anger and fear. Her face was red and her hands were trembling. It made Ellen feel terrible.
“There must have been a mix-up at headquarters,” Sue said.
“We were down here looking for cleaning supplies,” Tanya added.
“In cardboard boxes?” the girl demanded.
“Okay, look,” Ellen said, taking several steps toward the girl. “It’s true, we’re supposed to be cleaning. We got curious, that’s all. We saw these boxes of perfectly good clothes, and we thought of our grandchildren. Do you know if your mom plans on donating these boxes? Because Christmas is going to be lean for us this year.”
“So you’re really with Merry Maids?” the girl asked.
Ellen and her friends nodded.
“We’ll go check with our boss to find out what happened,” Sue said. “There must have been some confusion with the dispatcher.”
As Ellen and her friends skirted past the teenager on the stairs, the girl said, “I’ll ask my mom about the boxes.”
Now Ellen worried she’d draw Patty Cole’s suspicion if her daughter mentioned that the maids were interested in the boxes. “No, please don’t. I’m actually a little embarrassed now that I said anything to you about wanting them.”
The teen seemed to understand as they made their way to the kitchen. The real maids were nowhere in sight, thank goodness, as Ellen and her friends crossed the living room to the front door. They were nearly home free when Sue turned and asked the girl, “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
The girl’s face turned pale. “I won’t tell about your snooping if you don’t mention I came home early. Deal?”
Sue nodded and followed Tanya and Ellen out the door.
An hour and a half later, after they’d checked in at a local hotel, they sat in a booth at a nearby diner for an early supper. They were waiting for their food and looking over the papers they’d stolen from Patty Cole’s basement.
Was it really stealing if the ghost of the original owner told them to do it? Ellen frowned. He hadn’t actually told them to take the papers—only to look through his personal effects. She doubted they’d have much of a case if Patty Cole ever discovered her grandfather’s papers were missing and decided to press charges. Fortunately for Ellen and her friends, Patty Cole didn’t know them from Adam and had no way of tracking them down—unless they’d left their fingerprints behind. Ellen’s stomach turned a somersault.
“Look here,” Tanya said, pointing to the affidavit. “He’s naming names.”
“Oh my gosh. Hurley says that these officials were also members of the Ku Klux Klan.”
Sue read, “Aeroplanes dropped nitroglycerin bombs on buildings and homes in the Greenwood district, setting them on fire.”
“The mayor and the police commissioner, along with other city officials, also dropped turpentine balls and bombs into the houses in a conspiracy with other Klan agents to kill colored citizens and drive them from the land,” Ellen read.
“This is making me sick,” Tanya said. “We should have eaten first. I don’t think I can stomach anything now.”
“We can ask the waitress to pack it to go for us,” Sue said. “Maybe we’ll feel more like eating back at the hotel.”
“The city officials wanted to clear out Greenwood of its colored citizens to make way for a new railroad depot and industrial district,” Tanya read. “And at least one oil baron among them was after the mineral rights.”
“We own the mineral rights to our new property, don’t we?” Ellen asked.
“I don’t recall,” Sue said. “I’ll text Gayle and ask.”
“This is so unbelievable,” Tanya said. “Do you think Van Hurley was telling the truth?”
“His ghost wouldn’t have led us to this document if he’d made it all up,” Sue pointed out.
“I remember reading in that riot book that there was talk of a conspiracy, but nothing was ever proven,” Ellen said. “Some black citizens even said they’d received warning notes taped to their doors that said Leave Tulsa by June 1st. And a whole lot of lawsuits by black survivors who pressed charges against the city were never brought to trial.”
“How could the city officials and the Klan get away with this?” Tanya said. “Do you think we can bring them to justice?”
“They’re all dead by now,” Ellen said. “But maybe the city can still be made responsible. Maybe this affidavit can help the descendants of the victims get reparations.”
“I think it’s too far past the statute of limitations,” Sue said. “I don’t think anything can be done.”
“We need to find and identify those bodies,” Ellen insisted. “We’ve got to do whatever it takes to get Bob Brooks to help us.”
Chapter Nineteen: Skeleton Hunting
The OU anthropologist wasn’t at all what Ellen had expected. He was tall and thin—except for a round pot belly—and had a receding hairline of white tufts and a short white beard. His blue eyes were stunning, as if made from some magical crystal he’d unearthed. But it was his smile that was the most unexpected aspect of him. Ellen had expected a pompous academic only to find a friendly, outgoing, and very relaxed earth digger.
“Come on in,” he said, jumping up from behind his desk when Ellen tapped on his opened office door. “Please excuse the mess. I’m Bob.” He shook each of their hands as they introduced themselves. “Please make yourselves comfortable.” He pointed to three human skulls sitting on the top of a tall file cabinet. “Don’t mind my friends. They’re meant to cheer up the place, not freak you out.”
Ellen and Sue sat on a wrinkled leather loveseat tucked between two overflowing bookshelves. Tanya took a chair in front of the professor’s desk. Instead of returning to his seat behind the desk, he pushed a stack of papers aside and sat on the corner of it. “What can I do you ladies for?”
When neither Sue nor Tanya replied, Ellen realized that was her cue to speak. “We’re hoping you can tell us about your search for mass graves in Tulsa back in 1998.”
He frowned. “Well, there’s not much to tell. We found squat. End of story.”
“Do you think the mass graves exist?” Sue asked. “Or do you believe those were empty rumors.”
“At least one has to exist,” he said. “The reports from eye witnesses were incontrovertible—too many to be based on rumors.”
“We think we may have a lead on a possible site,” Ellen said.
“What kind of lead?” he asked.
Ellen glanced at Tanya and Sue.
“Bob, do you believe in ghosts?” Sue asked.
“Absolutely,” he said. “No one who’s seen and heard what I have could believe anything else.”
Ellen was glad but surprised. Most scientists looked down their noses at any mention of ghosts. Ellen had, too, just over a year ago. The more she got into this paranormal thing, the more she realized how obtuse she’d been.
“We’ve been investigating an abandoned building in Tulsa,” Ellen said.
“With a team of seasoned paranormal investigators,” Sue added.
“And we have reason to believe a mass grave of riot victims is on the property,” Ellen said.
“Would you be willing to help us?” Tanya asked. “Can you test the ground for signs of the bodies?”
Bob folded his arms across his chest. “Who owns the property?”
“We do,” Sue said.
He lifted his brows. “Oh? Good. That’s good. That means I don’t need to get any special permissions.”
“Does that mean you’ll help us?” Tanya asked.
“Well, now hold on,” he said. “Let�
�s not jump the gun. First tell me more about why you think this is the sweet spot.”
Ellen and her friends told the anthropologist about their experiences—about the whispers, “Don’t ignore us,” and “We are here.” They also told him about Vivian, about the butterflies, about Eduardo Mankiller and what happened that night with the Indian woman, the bones, the fire, and the wind. They told him about the dowsing rods, and the spirit that came up from the ground. They told him about the shadow man, who’d identified himself as Van Hurley through the Ouija Board. And they showed him the affidavit they’d recovered from Patty Cole’s basement.
As he looked over the yellowed papers, his face lit up with excitement. “Ain’t this something, ladies! Ain’t this something!”
“So where do we go from here?” Ellen asked.
“We need to get a move on to beat the snow,” Bob said. “Once the snow falls, my work gets a million times more difficult.”
“We also need to draw up an agreement of some kind,” Sue said. “Are you going to need us to pay you for your services?”
“All I want is a paper out of it,” he said, “and the credit for finding the grave, if we find it.”
“We don’t need the credit, do we?” Sue asked Ellen and Tanya.
“That doesn’t matter to me,” Tanya said. “I just want to help the spirits find peace.”
“Me, too,” Ellen said.
“How soon can you start?” Sue asked him.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “My classes are on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I’ll drive up there with my equipment and take some initial readings, working through the weekend. Then we’ll go from there.”
“Fantastic,” Ellen said, beaming.
Sue handed him a scrap of paper. “Here’s the address.”
“There’s a stick in the ground marking the spot the dowsing rods pointed to,” Ellen added, handing over a copy of the key. They’d received three at closing. “This will get you through the gate.”
“You ladies aren’t coming?” Bob asked. “It’s pretty exciting stuff.”
“We have to head back to San Antonio,” Tanya explained.
Ellen frowned. She really didn’t want to miss this. “Unless we postpone our trip back home.”
That night, the ladies shared a hotel in Norman, where they discussed the possibility of delaying their trip back to San Antonio.
Sue went online and discovered that they could upgrade their train ticket to a ten-ride pass, which would allow them to travel back and forth between Oklahoma City and San Antonio up to ten times over a 40, 60, or 180-day time frame. They wouldn’t be able to cancel their existing ride to San Antonio, scheduled for the next day, but, by upgrading, they wouldn’t lose their money, either.
“We’d still have nine trips after the upgrade,” Sue said. “I think this is a better deal, anyway. Don’t you?”
“Sure is,” Tanya agreed. “I didn’t know about the multi-ride option.”
“I didn’t either,” Ellen said. “I wonder if Nolan knows.”
“Can you take off another week of work?” Sue asked Tanya.
“I have something I’ve been meaning to tell you guys,” Tanya said.
“What?” Ellen asked, studying her friend’s face.
“I’ve been thinking about this since my mother died, and now that we’ve decided to make ghost healing a thing for us, well… I’m thinking about putting in my two weeks’ notice to the Immigration Office.”
“Really?” Sue asked.
“They’d been letting me do a lot of work from home, so I wasn’t sure I should quit,” Tanya said, “but it’s been soul-sucking, you know? I want to have the same freedom as the two of you to travel to different places, to find more ghosts to heal.”
“What does Dave think?” Sue asked.
“He wants me to be happy,” Tanya said. “As long as we can make money on our projects. Do you think we can?”
“Of course we can,” Sue said. “I mean, yes, there’s a risk. But I really think we can do this.”
“So it’s settled then?” Ellen asked. “We stay another week?”
“I’m good with that,” Sue said. “Tanya?”
“Will you help me draft my letter of resignation?” she asked them with a smile.
Ellen hugged each of her friends. “I know we can do this, ladies! We’re strong, independent women who can make our dreams come true.”
“I think this calls for a round of margaritas,” Sue said.
They decided to put on their shoes and go downstairs to the hotel bar for a quick celebration.
“We should form a limited liability company and call ourselves Ghost Healers,” Ellen said after taking a sip of her margarita.
“Ghost Healers, LLC.,” Sue said. “That has a nice ring to it.”
“We should get shirts made and maybe business cards,” Tanya said. “Maybe we could even set up a website where people could post about haunted places they know about.”
Ellen clinked her margarita glass against Tanya’s. “That’s actually a great idea. I could use my graphic art skills to create a killer website.”
“I could do our bookkeeping and our taxes,” Tanya said.
“And I’ll just smile and look pretty,” Sue said as she clinked her glass against each of theirs with a laugh.
Friday morning, after breakfast, they returned to Tulsa. The two and a half hours went by quickly as they brainstormed for more business ideas. It was noon when they arrived at their property to find Bob’s pickup already there. The anthropologist was pushing something resembling a lawn mower, over the ground where the dowsing rods had crossed. A cold front had blown in, and Ellen was wishing she’d packed a jacket. With all the hot flashes she’d been experiencing, she hadn’t anticipated needing one.
Ellen and her friends crossed the dusty yard to where Bob was working. They stood there, watching, not wanting to interrupt his work, when he suddenly noticed them.
“Hello, there,” he said, turning off his machine.
He walked up to them and shook each of their hands.
“Having any luck?” Ellen asked.
“Not with finding bodies,” he said. “But I do have some good news for you ladies.”
“Oh?” Sue asked.
“That spirit you thought came out of the ground here? That was gas from an oil seep.”
“What does that mean?” Tanya asked.
“You ladies are sitting on top of oil right here,” he said. “Please tell me you own the mineral rights.”
Ellen looked at Sue. “What did Gayle say?”
“I forgot to text her,” Sue said, pulling out her phone. “I’ll do it right now.”
“Oh, my gosh,” Tanya said. “I’m so nervous.”
As excited as Ellen was about the prospect of striking oil, she was disappointed about the mass grave. “No sign of bodies at all?”
“None here,” he said. “That doesn’t mean there isn’t a grave somewhere on the property. I’ll keep looking.”
“She says yes,” Sue said, jumping from the ground.
Ellen had never seen Sue jump.
“We own the mineral rights!” Sue repeated.
“You need to hire yourselves an oil well service,” Bob said. “There’s definitely something there.”
Their excitement was interrupted by the arrival of a police officer who walked up from the fence to meet them in the middle of the field.
“Hello. I’m Officer Ryan,” he said. He was tall, with brown curly hair and green eyes. He was probably in his thirties and was round but solid and a little intimidating to Ellen. “Can I see some identification, please?”
Bob pulled his wallet from his back trouser pocket and handed over his ID, asking, “What seems to be the problem, officer?” as Ellen, Sue, and Tanya dug theirs from their purses.
“I’m just wondering what you folks are up to,” he said. “This is city property. Do you mind telling me why you’re here?”
“We own the property,
Officer,” Sue said, shooting a thumb toward Ellen and Tanya.
“We just closed on it yesterday,” Ellen added.
“You can check with Gayle Boring at the ReMax Office in town,” Tanya said.
“Is that right? Very good, very good.” The officer returned their ID’s. “Just out of curiosity, what are you planning to do with this old building?”
“We hope to make apartments,” Sue said.
“Unless we find the mass grave of riot victims,” Ellen said. “In that case, maybe we’d do something else with it.”
“Like what?” Tanya asked. “We haven’t discussed that.”
“I don’t know,” Ellen said. “I’m just saying we should be open to other possibilities.”
“What other possibilities?” Sue asked. “You mean like a museum bed and breakfast?”
Tanya bent her brows. “Like the Gold House?”
“Wouldn’t it be cool to restore it to the social club that it once was?” Ellen asked. “There’s always people next door at Cain’s. I think someone might be interested in running an entertainment business here. Think how cool it would be to have the skating rink, bowling alley, ballroom, and dining room operational again. We could preserve the history and create a money-making business for someone.”
“Did you say you’re looking for a mass grave?” the officer asked.
“That’s right,” Bob answered.
“That’s why he’s here,” Sue added, shooting a thumb toward Bob. “He’s an anthropologist from OU.”
The officer frowned. “What prompted you to look here?”
“Oh, just a hunch,” Bob said.
“I wouldn’t waste your time,” Officer Ryan said with a laugh. “You might as well go digging for gold. There’s no mass grave.”
“Oh, there’s a mass grave, all right,” Bob insisted. “It might not be here on this property, but I assure you, it’s somewhere in Tulsa.”