The Case of the Abandoned Warehouse (Mystery House #2

by Eva Pohler

  Ellen went back for her bag, which was at the other end of the catwalk. “I’m right behind you.”

  “Bring that dip, if there’s any left,” he said.

  Tanya grabbed the bowl and followed.

  “I wonder what caused it to combust,” Bob said, as he continued to descend. “Usually it’s lightning.”

  “The angry spirits!” a voice called from below.

  They all froze in place. Then they came back to life and shined their flashlights on the skating rink floor below.

  “Who’s there?” Bob called out.

  “The fire is a warning!” the voice shouted again. Ellen recognized it as belonging to the old Indian woman. “The spirits don’t like white people. Leave while you still can!”

  An eerie sound of hisses and moans arose around them.

  Bob rushed down the stairs, with Tanya on his heels. Ellen followed while Sue shined her light from above.

  By the time they’d reached the floor below, there was no sign of the old woman, but the moans coming through the walls were almost deafening.

  “What is that?” Bob asked.

  “Angry spirits, I guess,” Sue said.

  Ellen struggled to catch her breath, but in between panting, asked, “Could the old woman have made the flame?”

  “I imagine that’s exactly what happened,” he said. “And maybe she is the one who wrote the note.”

  “We want to help!” Ellen said out loud, in case the woman was hiding in the shadows. “We can help you find another place to live. A safer place.”

  They waited for a reply, enduring the hisses and moans, but none came.

  “We need to extinguish that fire,” Bob said. “Come on.”

  When they reached the flame, Ellen was relieved to find that it hadn’t spread. She handed one of the water bottles to Bob while she quickly unscrewed the lid from another.

  “Scoop the dip on top, to smother it,” Bob told Tanya when the water did very little to the fire.

  Sue was still making her way across the field toward them. When her dip did the job, Ellen thought she’d be happy to know that she’d saved the day.

  “That was a close call,” Bob said. “The dead grass around here could have easily caught and spread over this entire lot, not to mention the nearby properties.

  “Can you imagine if it would have set fire to Cain’s?” Tanya said with a hand on her cheek.

  It was a Saturday night, and Cain’s was alive with people and music.

  “There are places around the world that have what are called eternal flames,” Bob said. “Usually lightning hits a gas seep, and then they can go on burning forever. They’ve figured into the mythology of many ancient peoples and are used today by a few notable groups.”

  When Sue caught up to them, she said, “Thanks a lot for leaving me behind with the weirdo.”

  “Did she do anything?” Bob asked.

  “She yelled at me,” Sue said. “Scared the heck out of me, too.”

  “You should have grabbed her,” Bob said.

  “She ran off. And my lightning speed failed me.” Then Sue noticed the empty bowl. “What happened to all the dip?”

  Chapter Twenty-One: Miss Margaret Myrtle

  Sunday morning, Ellen and her friends slept in, and then, after brunch with Lexi on the other side of town, they parked at the hotel before walking down to the property to check on Bob, who was at it again with his ground-penetrating radar device.

  “I found another note,” he said, pulling a piece of paper from his jacket pocket. “Have a look at this one.”

  Ellen took the note. It read:

  Be gone by tomorrow. Consider yourself warned.

  “This doesn’t sound like the words of the old Indian woman,” Sue said. “This was written by someone else.”

  “I agree,” Bob said. “You ladies need to be careful.”

  “I’m not going to let this stop me from doing what’s right,” Ellen said. “We can’t give in to terrorism.”

  “Just be ready for a fight,” he said.

  “We’re going to see if we can help speed up this process by paying a visit to Carrie French,” Ellen said.

  “She just returned my text,” Sue said. “She’s out of town.”

  “What about Eduardo or Miss Myrtle?” Tanya asked.

  Sue tapped on her phone with her thumbs. “I’ll text Eduardo first.” Then she said, “That was quick. He says he’s tied up all day today and tomorrow but could see us on Tuesday.”

  “Might as well book him before he makes other plans,” Tanya suggested.

  “Okay, done,” Sue said. “Now I’ll call Miss Myrtle.”

  “You ladies carry on,” Bob said. “I better get back to the grind.”

  They waved goodbye as he walked back to his machine and continued to push it along the ground.

  “Miss Myrtle?” Sue asked over the phone. “This is Sue Graham. Ellen and Tanya and I were wondering if you had any time to see us today. What? I’m so sorry to hear that. What’s that? Of course, we can. We’re on our way.” Sue hung up the call.

  “What’s wrong?” Tanya asked.

  “Miss Myrtle said she’s feeling very sick and uneasy because she senses a terrible catastrophe on the horizon. She wants us to come to her house right away.”

  Tanya covered her mouth. “That doesn’t sound good at all.”

  As they walked back to the rental car, Ellen’s phone rang. It was Paul.

  “Hi, honey,” she said.

  “What’s going on, Ellen? Is there something you haven’t told me about?”

  “I don’t know what you mean? Why?”

  “I just got a crank call from some guy who said I needed to take better control of my wife. What’s he talking about?”

  Ellen held her breath, stunned. She stopped in her tracks on the sidewalk.

  “Ellen?” Tanya asked. “Everything okay?”

  “Oh my gosh,” she said into the phone. “How did they get your number?”

  “How did who get my number?” Paul asked.

  Ellen glanced around at the people walking by her on the street. She lowered her voice and said into the phone, “Honey, I can’t talk about this right now, but I promise to call you as soon as I can. I promise I’m not doing anything wrong. But we’ve received a few threats…”

  “What?” Paul hollered, nearly making Ellen deaf in her right ear. “Why am I just now hearing about this?”

  “Paul, I’m sorry. Let me call you back when I can talk.”

  “Don’t forget,” he said.

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  She hung up and told her friends about the call.

  “Oh my gawd,” Sue said. “This is getting ridiculous.”

  “And scary,” Tanya added.

  They reached the rental car, climbed in, and headed for Miss Myrtle’s house in the Greenwood District. While Sue drove, Ellen called Paul back to explain what had been going on, and she listened to him rant about needing to come home right away before she got herself killed. She listened for a few minutes and then said she’d call back later. Tanya called Dave to check in with him. He hadn’t received any threatening calls, thank goodness. Once they’d pulled up to the curb in front of Miss Myrtle’s house, Sue called Tom. He had nothing to report, either.

  Who had gotten Paul’s number?

  When Miss Myrtle opened her door, Ellen was instantly worried. Margaret’s usual smile was gone. She wasn’t wearing makeup or jewelry. Her usually pretty nails were speckled with chipped polish. Worst of all, she had dark rings around her eyes, as though she hadn’t been getting enough sleep.

  “Miss Myrtle, are you okay?” Ellen asked.

  “Come inside, friends,” she said. “Come sit down.”

  Ellen and Sue squeezed against Tanya on the white sofa in the front room. Miss Myrtle closed the door behind them, moving more slowly than usual, and moaned as she fell into the chair across from them near the front window.

  “Do you want u
s to take you to the hospital?” Sue asked.

  “No. I’ll be alright,” she said. “But I can’t shake this feeling that something really bad is about to happen, and I think it has something to do with you three. I was gonna call you, but you beat me to it.”

  “If you change your mind, let us know,” Tanya said. “You don’t look so good.”

  “Now tell me why you called me,” Miss Myrtle said.

  “We were hoping you would come back to the site and help us look for the bodies,” Ellen said. “We’ve got that anthropologist from OU looking with his machine, but he’s come up with nothing so far.”

  “Why do you care so much about finding those bodies, anyway?” Miss Myrtle asked, her mood changed. “You just gonna turn that old place into apartments for a bunch of young white people to take over? You afraid the black folk will haunt them and ruin your chances of making money?”

  Ellen felt the blood leave her face.

  “Not at all,” Sue said. “You got us all wrong.”

  “Oh, yeah?” she challenged.

  “We’re planning to restore it to its original state,” Ellen explained. “Back into the social club it once was.”

  Miss Myrtle scrutinized them for a minute. “You know who built that place, don’t you?”

  “Um, someone by the name of Monroe?” Tanya said. “Why?”

  “You read about George Monroe, didn’t you?” Miss Myrtle asked.

  “He was the one whose hand was stepped on by the white invaders on the night of the riot as he hid with his siblings beneath a bed,” Ellen said. “Right?”

  “He was only five years old when they burned down his place,” Miss Myrtle said.

  “Was he related to the Monroe who built our social club?” Tanya asked.

  “Yes, he was,” Miss Myrtle said. “His father built it and managed it right up until after the riot. George used to talk about how much he loved playing in that place when he was a little boy, especially at the skating rink, because he was the youngest kid out there, and he could do all kind o’ tricks.”

  “But I thought the area was segregated,” Ellen said.

  “That came later,” she said. “At first, black and white businesses thrived alongside one another. But then the blacks were driven back, little by little. We weren’t relocated, like the Jews were in Europe, but it was nearly the same thing. And it’s still happening today. What do you think ‘urban renewal’ means? It means get the colored out the way and make room for white prosperous businesses.”

  “And you think we’re part of that?” Sue asked. “You think we’re part of the efforts to take over Greenwood?”

  “You tell me,” she said.

  Ellen leaned forward, scooting to the edge of the couch cushion. “The opposite is true, Miss Myrtle. We want to help build the community—the white and the black. Wouldn’t it be something if some day Monroe’s and Cain’s were full every night with both white folk and black folk having fun together, at both places? That’s our vision. Integration. Opportunity for both races to heal from the past and live in harmony together.”

  At that moment, a loud crash rang through the room, and broken glass flew onto Miss Myrtle, whose back was to the front window. A ball of fire struck the floor and alighted the carpet. Ellen screamed and jumped up, stomping on the fire with her feeble shoes. She was in too much shock to know if her skin was burning.

  Sue and Tanya plucked the pieces of glass that had lodged in Miss Myrtle’s back and arms and then helped her away from the front room. Once Ellen had the fire out, she called 9-1-1.

  Then they waited in the back of the house for the police and the ambulance to arrive.

  “This must be the catastrophe you sensed coming,” Sue said as she pressed a towel against Miss Myrtle’s wounds to stop the bleeding. “I’m so sorry if we brought this on you.”

  “This ain’t your fault,” Miss Myrtle said. “This ain’t your fight, either. It’s been going on for decades, and I doubt it’ll ever go away.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two: The Hunt

  After having been treated for first degree burns on her left foot and having stayed up all night with Miss Myrtle at the hospital, Ellen slept long and hard Monday morning. Bob had come by to check on them, but Ellen had slept though it and wouldn’t see him again until he returned to Tulsa from Norman on Friday morning.

  Sometime after noon, she finally got up and got dressed. She’d been feeling defeated after what had happened to Miss Myrtle, but after a hard sleep, she was ready to fight back again.

  “We can’t let them win,” she said to herself in the bathroom mirror.

  During lunch, she and her friends made a decision about which contractor to use, and, afterward, they met him at the building to discuss their plans and to give him a key. He said he hoped to get his cleanup crew started on Wednesday. From there, they drove to a copy place, where they made two copies of Van Hurley’s affidavit before their appointment with their attorney, which Tanya had made that morning. To be on the safe side, they’d chosen a black lawyer, a woman maybe ten years younger than they. Jillian Bridges was excited about the document and said a suit against the city would make her career. Then right before dinner, they returned to the site to meet the oil well guy. He conducted a preliminary investigation of the place and said he’d start the rig assembly on Thursday, if there were no complications getting the permit from the city. Ellen gave him a key to the gate so he could come and go to take soil and rock samples as needed. Then they went by a floral shop and got flowers for Miss Myrtle and took them to her in the hospital. They’d convinced the doctors to let her stay a couple of days while the police investigated the vandalism to her house.

  To celebrate their productive day, they then treated themselves to a very expensive steak dinner at what they’d been told by the hotel staff was the best restaurant in town.

  Now, they were heading back to the site to conduct their very first, very own, paranormal investigation.

  In addition to the ghost hunting equipment, they brought along the Ouija Board, the electric lantern they’d borrowed from Bob, and some croissants from the corner bakery for later—though after that big steak dinner, Ellen couldn’t imagine getting hungry again. Maybe she’d leave hers for the Indian woman.

  By the time they’d arrived, night had fallen, even though it wasn’t yet eight o’clock, but Bob’s lantern really lit up the place. Tanya went through the skating rink and upstairs to get the one chair for Sue, and they placed it next to the wooden risers in the back of the ballroom. Sue had packed a few towels from the hotel, so they wouldn’t have to sit on anything dirty. Ellen made herself comfortable on one of the lower risers and opened the ghost hunting kit to check out the equipment.

  Ellen picked up one of the devices and said, “This is the EMF detector. It measures the electromagnetic fields, and if…”

  “Ellen, we’ve seen Supernatural,” Sue said. “We already know about all this stuff. You don’t have to tell us.”

  “Well, don’t get all snippy about it,” Ellen said. “How do I know what you know and what you don’t know? And what’s Supernatural?”

  “Oh, gawd.” Sue rolled her eyes. “You’ve never seen Supernatural? You really are a newbie.”

  “It’s one of my favorite shows,” Tanya said. “I’m kind of obsessed with Dean.”

  “Sam’s my favorite,” Sue said with a gleam in her eye.

  Tanya lifted her hands in the air. “He’s just a baby.”

  “So is Dean compared to you, sugar pie,” Sue pointed out.

  Ellen put her face in her hands. “Can we please get back to our investigation?”

  “This really is more of an art than a science, Ellen,” Sue said. “You of all people should know that.”

  Ellen’s mouth dropped open. “What is that supposed to mean? You don’t want to investigate?”

  “Of course, I do,” Sue replied. “But you need to chill, woman.”

  Ellen stood from the riser with the EMF detec
tor and the infrared thermometer and walked around the room, looking back and forth between the needle on the EMF meter and the digital reading on the thermometer.

  “Shouldn’t we be recording this?” Tanya asked.

  “Good idea,” Sue said. She took out her phone and pointed it at Ellen. “Here we are on Monday, November 7th, 2016. While the rest of the nation is at the height of one of history’s most exhausting election seasons, we are here making some history of our own.”

  “Wait. Did you hear that?” Tanya asked.

  “What?” Ellen hadn’t heard anything.

  Sue pointed the camera at Tanya. “Tell us what you heard.”

  “It sounded like a thud. Like something fell on the ground.”

  “Upstairs?” Ellen asked.

  Tanya shook her head. “Outside.”

  Ellen went to the front windows but couldn’t see past the shrubs and dead vines. “I’ll run upstairs and let you know if I can see anything.”

  She took her EMF meter and thermometer along, checking them as she neared the second floor. Still nothing unusual. When she reached the second floor, she went inside the back bedroom—the east wing’s mirror to the dreamcatcher room—and looked down. Her breath caught. Down below, a crowd had gathered.

  “Oh my gosh!” she cried to her friends. “Something’s happening outside. I can’t tell what.”

  “Should we go out there and see?” Tanya called up to her.

  Ellen slipped the EMF meter and thermometer into the pockets of her trousers and used her flashlight to guide her down the steps.

  “I think we should get out of here,” Ellen said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but there’s a crowd of trespassers out there, and that can’t be good.”

  “Didn’t we lock the gate behind us?” Tanya asked.

  “Yes,” Ellen said. “I’m sure of it.”

  “Maybe it’s just a group from Cain’s out for some fresh air,” Sue said. “Maybe they don’t realize someone owns this place now.”

  “Some of them are wearing black hoods,” Ellen said. “Maybe it’s the Ku Klux Klan.”