The Legend of Sleepy Harlow

by Kylie Logan

  “Well, the body would have had to have been moved at night. But there was a lot of blood. If you checked—”

  “Your ghost hunters’ vehicles?” Hank grimaced. “We’d need a warrant, and we don’t have enough evidence to get one. I did, however . . .” He sat back, and to tell the truth, Hank didn’t do prevarication very well. There was a tinge of pink in his cheeks when he said, “I may have glanced in their trucks when I saw them parked around town.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “And nothing. Nothing I could see, anyway. Whoever moved that body was smart enough to wrap it in plastic first. I guarantee that, just like I guarantee that plastic is long gone. Even had the guys check the landfill. In fact, the only even semi-interesting thing we’ve found . . .” There was a TV nearby on a stand and, without a word, Hank took a DVD off his desk and slipped it into the player at the front of the TV.

  “Remember back at the winery the day you found the body? One of my officers came across a camera.”

  “One of the ghost getters’ cameras?” I sat up like a shot.

  “Don’t get too excited.” Hank sank down in the chair behind his desk. “It’s one of theirs, all right, but if you’re looking for a smoking gun—”

  “I’m not.” I wasn’t any better a liar than Hank. Of course I was looking for a smoking gun. A smoking gun (or in this case, a battered plasmometer) in someone else’s hand would exonerate Kate.

  “The camera slid under some old boxes in that back room where you found the body and landed in a stagnant puddle of water. It looked like it would be pretty useless, but we sent it off to the state crime lab and they were able to get something off of it. I want you to take a look at it,” Hank said, grabbing the remote. “See if it makes any sense to you.”

  I couldn’t help myself. In spite of Hank’s suggestion that I shouldn’t get excited, a funny cha-cha rhythm started up inside my chest. With sweaty palms, I clutched the arms of the chair. Better that than letting Hank see that my hands were trembling.

  It took only a few more seconds, but by the time he got the video going, I was about to burst.

  There was nothing to see on the TV screen in front of me except blackness. I heard a crackle, and a zigzag of gray shot across the screen.

  “What the hell do you mean you’re not going to do it?”

  The voice belonged to Noreen.

  The picture bounced, and a second later, Noreen’s face filled the screen, then was gone again.

  “You can’t—” Static crackled and blocked out Noreen’s words. “—told me you would. How dare you—”

  The screen went black and my spine accordioned and I plopped back in my chair. “Well, I can see why you said I shouldn’t get too excited.”

  “Shhh!” Hank pointed to the TV.

  A blob of gray lightened the screen, and a second later, it once again filled with a picture of Noreen’s face. No doubt she’d set down her camera and was standing in front of it. The picture went out of, then back into, focus. As she had been the last time I’d seen her—both alive and dead—Noreen was dressed in her ghost-hunting gear: camouflage pants, heavy sweatshirt, fishing vest. The light was terrible and the colors of her clothing were washed out on the video, like an old-fashioned tintype that had been hand-colored. Against the rest of the anemic colors, her cheeks looked too pink.

  “Are you finally ready?” Noreen asked.

  Like Noreen, I waited for the answer. With my breath caught behind a ball of tension in my throat, I leaned forward in my chair, waiting to see who she was with and what would happen next at the same time I searched the picture for anything that might provide a clue.

  “She’s in that back room,” I said, more to myself than to Hank. “The room where I found her body. You can see the basket-weave pattern of the brickwork behind her.”

  Hank, no doubt, had already noticed that. He caressed his chin with one hand.

  Though Noreen was still the only person in the picture, it was clear someone had joined her. Her head snapped around. Like me, she’d heard the faint shuffle of feet.

  “I’m going to switch the plasmometer on,” Noreen said. “You better be ready to go as soon as I do. Walk in from back there.” She looked over her shoulder into the deeper shadows at the far end of the storeroom. “I’ll be scanning the room and I’m going to say that it feels suddenly colder. That’s your cue. That’s your cue to walk in and leave that old magazine. You know, to prove who you are.”

  “Cue?” I remembered everything Jacklyn had told me about how she merely acted her way through each investigation. Still, the enormity of what I saw playing out in front of me on the screen felt like a fist to the solar plexus. I sucked in a breath. “Is Noreen saying what I think she’s saying?”

  “Shh,” was Hank’s answer.

  I gulped back my excitement and propped my elbows on Hank’s desk, the better not to miss the flicker of even one shadow on the screen.

  “All right. All set.” Whoever Noreen was waiting for,now was the time. “I’m switching on the plasmometer, so you’d better step lively. We both know this piece of junk isn’t going to stay on for long.”

  When she leaned over to flip the switch on the plasmometer, Noreen disappeared from the picture. A second later, the screen filled with a flash of chartreuse light and Noreen was back. This close to the plasmometer, her face looked like a caricature of itself, her eye sockets too deep and black, her mouth too much of a slash, her doughy cheeks the texture and color of moldy white bread.

  “I’m ready,” she said, glancing over her shoulder toward that dark corner where she’d told her coconspirator to make an appearance. “Are you listening? I said, I’m ready.” She cleared her throat. “I’m here in one of the old storage rooms at the winery,” she said, “and I’ve been trying to catch EVPs for the last ten minutes. I’ve played back what I recorded and so far, no luck. But it’s suddenly gotten a lot colder in here.”

  Noreen waited.

  Nothing happened.

  “It’s suddenly gotten a lot colder in here,” she said, louder this time.

  And still, nothing happened.

  Noreen grumbled a word that would definitely have been bleeped if the show ever made it to the air. “Where the hell are you? Come on, do what you’re supposed to do and let’s get this over with before the cops come back. Do what you’re being paid to do and quit acting like a prima donna. I told you I’d make it up to you. I told you I’d—”

  A shuffling noise brought Noreen spinning around just as the screen filled with the blinding green light of the plasmometer. The light swirled and arced. Right before the plasmometer knocked into the camera and sent it careening under the shelves and into the puddle of water where Hank said they’d found it, I caught a last glimpse of Noreen’s face.

  Her eyes were open wide. Her mouth was a gaping hole of terror.

  She knew as well as Hank and I did that the plasmometer was about to come down on her head and that in just another second, she’d be dead.

  * * *

  I didn’t ask for anything to drink, but Hank was enough of a professional to recognize the first telltale signs of shock when he saw them. I guess my shallow breaths and clammy skin qualified. The next thing I knew, there was an open can of Pepsi on the desk in front of me, and it wasn’t the diet version I drank when I drank soda (which was hardly ever because I didn’t especially like the way it tasted or the way the bubbles made me feel as if my stomach had been pumped with a tire inflator). This was the high-test stuff, and I knew the sugar and caffeine would pack the punch I needed. I lifted the can with both hands and drank deep.

  The bubbles tickled my throat and, yes, my stomach felt as if it had been pumped with a tire inflator. On the upside, the sugar raced through my system like a shot of adrenaline. I may not have been completely coherent by the time I set the empty can back on the desk, but I was getting there.

  “Did we just see what I think we just saw?” I asked Hank. Three cheers for me, my voice didn
’t tremble. Well, at least not too much.

  “A murder? I’m afraid we did.”

  “The murderer couldn’t have known Noreen was already filming. If he did, there’s no way he would have left the camera there.”

  “Or he did know it was there and he couldn’t find the camera once it was knocked off whatever Ms. Turner had it propped on. I told you, we found it in a puddle of slimy water beneath some very old shelves.”

  “Or maybe that’s when Kate got back to the winery. The killer might have heard her come in and then he panicked. He left without the camera because he couldn’t take the chance of sticking around, not once he knew there was someone else on the premises. Either one of those scenarios makes sense. What doesn’t . . .”

  Like it or not, my gaze drifted back to the TV screen. Hank had paused the DVD and I found myself staring into Noreen’s terrified face. I swallowed hard.

  “In that very first bit we saw, it sounded like she was trying to talk someone into something,” I said.

  “I agree with you there.”

  “And it sounded like that someone didn’t want to be talked into it.”

  “Agreed. Again.”

  “But in that second bit . . .” Just thinking about what we’d just seen unfold in front of our very eyes made my insides shimmy. “It’s—”

  “Yeah.” Hank sat back in his chair. I was grateful he’d cut me off. I could think of plenty of words to describe Noreen’s murder—brutal, savage, and incredibly disturbing came right to mind—but none of those words was sufficient to describe what we’d just seen, or the emotions that overloaded my senses. Disgust. Outrage. Clinical interest. I’m not sure which disturbed me the most. Maybe it didn’t matter.

  A flash of memory swam up through the riot of emotions. “Noreen said the plasmometer was junk.”

  “Yeah, I caught that.” Hank had brought over a can of soda for himself, and he popped the top and poured the soda into a paper cup. “You need more?” he asked, and when I shook my head, he finished pouring and sipped. “So you tell me, do your guests think that plasmo-whatever is junk? The way they’ve been pestering me to get that hunk of metal back, you’d think it was God’s gift to mankind.”

  “Not God’s. Noreen’s.” When Hank gave me a blank look, I explained. “It’s called the Turner Plasmometer because Noreen designed it. Every single one of the ghost getters I’ve talked to has told me that it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, that it puts them one step ahead of every other ghost-hunting team out there, and that they can’t live without it. Well . . .” I thought about what I’d said. “Maybe not Jacklyn.”

  “What did Jacklyn tell you?”

  “That she doesn’t believe any of this ghost hooey. Except for the video of Sleepy. That, she says, is as real as real can get.” In my head, I went over the scene we’d just watched. All told, it couldn’t have lasted more than a minute, so it wasn’t hard to recall it frame by frame.

  “Whoever was there with Noreen, there’s no sign of him on the video,” I said. Of course, Hank already knew this, so there was no use waiting for him to respond. “I’d bet anything that whoever it was, he was dressed like Sleepy. Noreen was going to get more footage of Sleepy! Isn’t that what it sounded like to you? She said she was going to say something about feeling cold, then the person was supposed to walk in. That’s the only thing it could mean. Makes me wonder about that video she shot last year. It must have been phony, too.”

  “Could that be something our murderer didn’t want anyone to find out about? That the ghost they claim they caught was nothing but a fake?”

  I couldn’t help myself—for a second, I pictured Chandra roaming the island, ready to defend Sleepy’s ghostly reputation in any way she could. I didn’t dare mention the fantasy to Hank; he already had one of my friends under suspicion, and I didn’t want his brain latching on to any of the others.

  “The ghost isn’t the only thing that’s a fake,” I told Hank. “If just about everybody in EGG thought that plasmometer was the be-all and end-all of ghost hunting, that means that Noreen was a fake, too. She lied to them about everything. The power of the plasmometer, and that video they shot last year, the one that made EGG famous. If one of them found out she faked it all . . . Well, I’ll tell you what, Hank, except for Jacklyn, these paranormal investigators take their jobs very seriously. If they found out Noreen wasn’t a believer and that she’d lied to them all, it just might be a motive for murder.”

  Hank let go a long, low whistle at the same time that I mumbled, “Hell hath no fury like a ghost getter scorned.”

  * * *

  The EGG-head I really wanted to talk to was Liam, the group’s equipment tech, who should have been able to tell me more about the Turner Plasmometer. But when I got home from the police station, he was nowhere around. In fact, the house was empty except for Ben.

  Or was it Eddie?

  The cameraman—whichever cameraman it was—was sitting out on the front porch steps.

  “Not filming today?” I asked.

  He’d just finished a cigarette, and one look from me and he knew better than to flick the butt into my flower beds. He stubbed it out and set it on the toe of his sneaker. “Dimitri said we needed another break. Everybody pretty much scattered. I heard a few of them were going to head downtown to party.”

  “You’re not a partier?”

  “Thought I’d catch up on my reading.”

  With his long, stringy, dark hair and a beard that looked as if it could use a good mowing, he didn’t exactly strike me as the reading type. But then, I am often surprised by readers and the books they enjoy.

  “Anything interesting?” I asked him.

  His hand shot to the thick book on the steps next to him. “Technical stuff. Once this show is up and going and I have a few bucks in my pocket, I’m hoping to finish my MFA in film at UCLA.”

  Like I said, people are full of surprises.

  But then, there are people who say I am, too.

  I plunked down on the step next to . . . er . . . Ben.

  “So you’re a guy with a great imagination. You must be, or you wouldn’t be getting your graduate degree in film. So what do you think of it all?”

  “You mean Noreen’s murder?” He lit another cigarette but, thank goodness, he had the good sense to exhale in the other direction. “If the cops ever figure out what happened, I’m gonna turn it into a screenplay.”

  I hoped I looked impressed. “Not just that. What about the whole paranormal investigation show? Jacklyn told me she fakes her way through it.”

  “Jacklyn.” When he snorted, a stream of smoke shot out his nose. “Not my favorite subject.”

  “I thought Noreen was the one nobody liked.”

  “True.” He tapped ash into the flowers, and I found myself hoping that cigarette ash contained magical properties that could keep cats away. “It’s not everybody who doesn’t like talking about Jacklyn. That would be just me.”

  A brief picture flashed through my mind: gorgeous, musky Jacklyn and this scarecrow of a camera guy. “You and Jacklyn . . . ?”

  “Yup.” He tipped back his head and it didn’t take an ounce of imagination to know he was picturing what I’d just been picturing. Only in Technicolor and with surround sound. “She’s something, huh? Way better in bed than Noreen ever was.”

  I nearly choked. “You’re telling me that you and Noreen . . . ?”

  “Come off it! Just because you live on an island in the middle of nowhere doesn’t mean you’re some prude. Not a cute chick like you!” He gave me a smile. “Yeah, Noreen and I, we’d hook up once in a while.”

  “But it didn’t last. Who broke it off?”

  He shrugged. “Her? Me? I honestly can’t say. I can say that Noreen was demanding. She wanted to be the boss. And it’s one thing, you know, when you’re in front of the camera or you’re leading a ghost hunt. Then somebody’s got to be in charge. I get that. But in real life, it’s not supposed to operate like that.
There’s supposed to be give and take.”

  “And Noreen wanted to take but not give.”

  “You got that right.” Done with that cigarette, he added the butt to the one on his shoe top.

  “But Jacklyn was different?”

  “More girly, you know?” There was that look again. Dreamy, drunken, besotted. It might not have been true love, but I had no doubt there was a whole lot of true lust going on.

  “That’s why Noreen didn’t like her.”

  “Noreen didn’t like anyone.”

  I thought about the snippet of video I’d seen back at the police station and what Noreen had said to the person off camera about how that person shouldn’t be angry anymore. “Was there anyone Noreen didn’t like more than anyone else lately?” I asked him. “Someone she’d been fighting with?”

  Eddie . . . er . . . Ben barked out a laugh. “Who wasn’t she fighting with? Every minute of every day, Noreen found someone, somewhere to get into it with. She didn’t like the way we stood when we shot video. She didn’t agree with the sound tech when she listened to his recordings. She didn’t like the way Dimitri did the intro on one of our spots or the research Rick and David found out about a site we were investigating. I’ll tell you what, I’ve never met a person anywhere who was as miserable as Noreen. And she let the world know it.”

  “Who was the latest person?”

  He shot me a look. “You mean before she died? If you ask me, it’s a toss-up. Dimitri was steaming mad at her.”

  “Because of the magazine article she published that used all his research.”

  “You know about that?” I can’t say for sure, but I think he was impressed. “Then you know David went looking for him Wednesday night and Dimitri wasn’t around.”

  “David mentioned it.”

  “And you know about Thursday morning, too, right?” He rubbed a finger under his nose. “Maybe you don’t know. You weren’t around Thursday morning.”

  “I left breakfast for all of you.”

  “Yeah, well, obviously Noreen didn’t make it to the table.”

  “Obviously.”