“No, not the same,” Ruby answered. “The only original piece from our days is the mirror there on that wall by the bathroom. The rest has been added over the years. The bed, however, is in the same place. It could be the same one. It’s in the same place,” she repeated.
Taryn understood.
“When my fiancé died I eventually sold our place,” she admitted. “Before I did, though, I tried living in it. The furniture brought back to many memories and I thought I might go insane so I put most of it in storage and bought new stuff. I thought it might help. The first night, though, I was sitting on the new couch in the living room and realized that even though it was a new couch, it was in the same position as the old one. I was still looking in the same direction, at the same view, that Andrew once had. I couldn’t stand it. It was 3:00 am and I was up dragging furniture around by myself.”
Ruby smiled unhappily. “Not many people understand that. Some want everything to stay the same. Others crave change. I go back and forth.”
Taryn nodded. “So do I.”
“It’s been so long,” Ruby grimaced. “So long. I shouldn’t still be affected the way I am. Time is meant to heal, and in many ways it has, but there’s an old hurt that just won’t go away.”
“Yes,” Taryn agreed. “It’s been years for me as well and yet sometimes it feels like yesterday. Other times it’s almost like he was never here at all. It feels like a dream.”
“Thank you for taking this job and for bringing the pictures to me,” Ruby said. But Taryn could sense rather than hear disappointment in her voice and was concerned.
“Is everything okay? I mean, is there something else you wanted that I didn’t get?”
Ruby rose to her feet and began pacing the room. She was surrounded by reminders of her success: numerous awards spanning her four decades in the business, framed candid shots of her with everyone from Dolly Parton to Bruce Springsteen, concert posters advertising her shows at places like Carnegie Hall and the Rose Bowl Stadium…
And yet now she had nothing but the look of a woman knee-deep in awful grief.
“No, you did a terrific job. The old place is an eyesore but the photographs are wonderful. You should consider doing an exhibit of your work. I have a friend who owns a small gallery in Franklin. I can talk to her if you’d like.”
Taryn straightened with pride and folder her hands to keep from clapping with glee. “Well, yes, thank you. That would be nice.”
Ruby stopped and turned, her skirt whipping around her slender legs. “I was wondering if you…” She let her voice trail off as her eyes drifted to the ceiling, searching for the right words.
“Yes?”
“Have you seen anything? I mean, have you felt or seen anything that’s perhaps not…obvious?”
Taryn bit her lip and looked down at her feet. She noticed a clump of mud on one side of her left boot and hoped she didn’t track anything into the house.
“I know the motel is meant to be haunted,” she said slowly. “I watched some videos on You Tube of paranormal groups going in and investigating.”
Ruby waved her hand, the large rings that adorned her fingers sparkling in the sunlight that streamed in through the bay windows. “Charlatans, most of them. EVPs and such. I never understood any of that. How do they know they’re not just picking up on radio frequencies from other devices? And it’s always the same thing. I don’t trust those who make their videos and write their blog posts and do such things for publicity. I trust you.”
Taryn, incredibly flattered, preened under her words. “I’m not a psychic,” she said. “I don’t communicate with the dead like some people claim to be able to do. Sometimes, though, I do pick up on stuff.”
“Yes,” Ruby said gravely. “I know.”
Taryn wondered how much she knew.
“You do?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I may have felt something in the room as I was leaving,” Taryn said at last. “And maybe a few little things around the rest of the motel.”
Ruby nodded in encouragement.
Now was the time to tell her about the picture, but she still wasn’t sure she should. “How do you feel about these things?”
Ruby narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. “I am not a religious person, but I am very spiritual. I am under no illusion that I will live forever and with each passing birthday I feel myself growing closer and closer to the end. The older I get, the more I feel connected to the things I can’t see. Does that make sense?”
“Total sense,” Taryn agreed. “I feel the same way, but mostly because I have a medical condition that affects me in a way that, well, let’s say makes me feel closer to my own mortality.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” Ruby said, looking at Taryn with surprise. “You’re so young!”
“It’s okay,” Taryn waved it off. “I’d like to hear more about what you were saying.”
“Well, lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my past. I want to feel connected to it. In this business you’re always moving forward, always thinking ahead. The stuff you did doesn’t matter nearly as much as what you’re going to do. You’re only as good as your next album, next tour, next everything. I’ve spent a lot of time looking forward.” Ruby paused and sighed, for the first time since Taryn met her looking her age. “I miss my friend. I miss Parker something fierce. But as hard as I try, I can’t find him. They say that a person is never truly gone as long as they’re in your heart but that’s not true. I can’t feel him at all!”
Taryn felt tears welling up in her eyes. She understood. She, too, had never felt Andrew. It was as though when he died he’d moved straight on to whatever was awaiting him, leaving nothing of himself behind in her world.
“I want to know that there is something else out there. I need to know that this isn’t the end. I want to feel him again.”
Taryn lowered her head. Yep, she thought, I’ll have to tell her.
“Then there’s a picture I kept back that you need to see,” she said aloud.
Ruby walked back over and sat down by Taryn while she pulled up the image she’d left out, the one of the man by the door. When it popped up on the screen, Ruby gasped, a strangled noise that sounded like she might be on the verge of choking or crying.
Taryn watched, helpless, as the other woman’s eyes filled with water that she held back. With a steady hand she reached towards the computer and gently outlined the figure, her coral-painted nails barely touching the screen.
“It’s him,” she whispered. “He’s there.”
“Maybe,” Taryn explained slowly. “He may not really be there. The room might just be remembering. Sometimes we, my camera and I, pick up on leftover energy. It doesn’t necessarily mean his spirit is trapped in the room or that he’s still there.”
“But it could mean that,” Ruby countered.
“It could,” Taryn relented, not wanting to get her hopes up.
“I’ve been in there several times, trying to find him. I’ve called out to him, spoke his name. But he’s never come to me,” Ruby said softly. “He doesn’t come to me.”
“Miss Dixie is my conduit,” Taryn said gently. “She helps me with these things. I can’t always pick up on them on my own. I don’t think it’s you. Sometimes these spirits have little control over what they can and cannot do.”
“Taryn,” Ruby said suddenly, turning to face her. “I haven’t been honest with you.”
“Oh?”
Ruby shook her head. “No. When I said I was familiar with your work, well, I didn’t just mean your paintings. I also meant your work with the afterlife. I discovered you on a website about the paranormal. I read the newspaper articles about you and your work in Indiana and on Jekyll Island. I know this sounds like the ramblings of a crazy old woman, but I bought the motel because of you.”
Taryn felt the blood draining from her face. “I don’t understand,” she whispered, confused.
“I want you to help me find my Park
er. I want you to bring Black Raven Inn back to life so that he can return to me. That’s why I hired you.” The quiet desperation in her voice nearly broke Taryn’s heart. “Can you help me?”
Nine
“So she wants you to help her find the man she used to sing with?” Matt asked with his usual blend of skepticism and healthy dose of cerebral curiosity. “As in his ghost?”
Taryn rooted around in her plastic tub for her box of charcoals while she balanced her phone on her shoulder. “Well, he was more than that but basically, yeah. She thinks I can help and I’ll be more discreet than a run-of-the-mill psychic or ghost hunter. She thinks I am a conduit to these things.”
“Well, you are…” Matt pointed out.
Taryn shrugged. It wasn’t really her that was the conduit, it was Miss Dixie. They were kind of a team.
“Anyway, she also gets a painting out of it from me so I guess her money goes further.”
“And you’re not going to run to a tabloid or anything,” Matt agreed.
“Right.”
Now that she was set up with her folding chair, charcoals, and sketch pad she made herself comfortable. The lobby was still dreary, but she thought her eyes were starting to adjust to the gloom.
“So what are you supposed to do if his ghost pays you a visit?” Matt teased her. “Tell him to stay right there while you call her and she hightails it over to the motel?”
Taryn laughed and then felt a little guilty. Well, it was kind of funny. “She’s hoping I capture some things on film. I don’t know that she actually wants to be here.”
“So the one picture wasn’t enough?”
“Not for some people.” Taryn frowned. “When you’ve lost someone, you want as much of them as you can get. I told her I couldn’t make any promises but that I’d do what I could. That means I’m going to have to spend an awful lot of time in that room.”
“Taryn?” Matt’s voice grew serious again, a sign he was putting a lot of thought into what he was about to say. “Are you sure this is good for you? Getting lost in the past like that again? Each time you do it, it takes a little more out of you…”
“Matt,” Taryn replied with the same patience she once used when he was arguing the logic, or illogic, of her favorite Saturday morning cartoons as children. “This is what I am supposed to do. This is why I’m here. I don’t always like it but running from it doesn’t help. It just so happens that this is the first time I’ve actually been paid to do it.”
“Okay,” Matt said in return, but she didn’t have to hear it in his voice to know he wasn’t convinced; she could all but feel his hesitancy through the miles between them. “Just one more question.”
“What?”
“How on earth are you going to make your paintings reflect the hotel in a positive light? I mean you’re good but are you really that good?”
Taryn busted in laughter. The booming sound echoed through the dark, stuffy space until it was almost radiant.
It took Taryn more than three hours to sketch the lobby to her satisfaction. For now, her sketch represented the space as it was. Once she began painting she’d wave her magic wand and take it back to a better, gentler time when it was at least clean and new, if not sparkling and beautiful.
She planned on doing a lot of research in order to locate photographs of it from the 1950s and 1960s, although most of the work would stem from her own imagination.
Taryn had worked with a lot less; she’d recreated houses that been almost totally demolished in fires, without any pictures or original artwork to work from.
Matt was right, though. This was a challenge of a different kind. In the majority of her jobs, the structures she recreated had once been beautiful and stately, if not grand. The Black Raven Inn had never been beautiful by any stretch of the imagination. She could make it look authentic and true to its original construction, though. Perhaps slightly better without totally embellishing the design.
“You turning in for the day?” Aker asked in a tone that was casually polite, it not completely friendly yet.
“Yep! It’s getting late and my tummy is growling. You have a nice day?” She was bound and determined to win him over. Eventually.
“It was quiet. That’s all I ask for,” he replied with resolve.
Taryn imagined that he had seen a lot in his day; his present job must have been downright boring. Other than the rat (which he knew about) and the hand on her shoulder in Room #5 (which he didn’t know about) nothing had caused any excitement in the time they’d been on the job. All he had to do was unlock the gates, search the perimeter and interior before she started work, and sit out in the sun all day while she did her thing. It wasn’t exactly life on the beat.
“Let’s start early again tomorrow, okay?” she asked as they began packing up their respective vehicles. “I need to catch that morning light so that I can see in there.”
“Early is fine with me,” he replied, adjusting his dark sunglasses and brushing a speck of invisible lint from his jacket.
“And, uh, by ‘early’ I mean–“
“Nothing before 10:00 am,” he finished for her. “I know the drill.”
Taryn grinned. In a weird way, it was almost like having a partner.
The pale moon was already sharing the sky with the sinking sun when Taryn drove back towards Hillsboro Village and her apartment. After a drive through White Castle, she took a turn down Music Row, blowing on her hot fries as she cruised past the signs congratulating songwriters on their latest hits.
“So depressing,” she murmured.
She was saddened to see that so many of the bungalows and buildings that had once housed publishing companies and record labels were empty. Growing up, Music Row had been a thriving area, full of professional offices for the music business. Now, many of the companies had either closed or been bought up by larger companies or relocated to newer buildings closer to downtown. Some had moved to Los Angeles. The little shopping area off of Demonbruen that was once home to a Barbara Mandrell museum and George Jones gift shop was now a virtual ghost town. Even Shoney’s was gone.
On the other hand, downtown was booming. As a child it was virtually empty. Her own grandmother had once remarked that you couldn’t get her to “drive through downtown in the broad daylight.” As a teenager, she’d watched as Second Avenue enjoyed a revival, what with the line dance craze and building of the Wild Horse Saloon and Hard Rock Café. Broadway, Second, and Printer’s Alley weren’t just places for liquor and live music–now you could hardly walk down any of them on a weekend without bumping into families with camera and toddlers in tow.
Taryn’s own neighborhood in Hillsboro Village had seen its fair share of changes, too. When she’d first moved in the main draw had been a used bookstore and the Pancake Pantry. The Pancake Pantry was the size of her living room back then, and the lines stretched around the block if you didn’t know what time to go. Now there were more than two dozen boutiques and cafes. The old Belcourt Theatre had been revitalized and showed arthouse films, and the whole area was teeming with hipsters and industry professionals alike.
Ironically, the Pancake Pantry had expanded and was now three times larger than it had been–and the lines still wrapped around the building.
Things changed. Taryn wasn’t really that keen on changes.
Although she’d spent most of her childhood in Franklin, Nashville was still her “hometown” but while she could appreciate the economic growth the city had seen, it no longer felt like hers anymore. She’d always kind of liked the grittiness and blue collar worker meets old southern money feel the city had kept. She liked the fact that she could go to the Green Hills Mall and walk through the shops with fur coats, pretending she had money, while still cruise Broadway and see struggling musicians standing on the street corners with their guitar cases open for change. Now there was a glossiness to all of it, a Hollywood finish that made it all feel like a replica of something else.
It was still her favorite city
, though. It was hard to imagine living anywhere else.
As Taryn turned into her parking spot, she groaned with soreness. It had been a long day.
Her building was old and rambling. It creaked and moaned with every stiff breeze and there were smells inside that grew worse with each passing year. But from her bedroom window she could see the Nashville skyline with the Batman building’s ears poking up and at night the lights of the city shone through and sprinkled her floors, making her feel less alone.
That part of Nashville was still hers.
Someone was playing the guitar outside. He could hear the music drift through the thick, rancid air and find its way inside the cramped room where it wrapped itself around him. He was hot and sticky and the stench was making him sick to his stomach but the sound of the music was pure and clean. It cleansed him as it washed over him and, for a moment, he felt unsoiled and alive again.
The moment ended when the musician stopped and the music abruptly departed, leaving him alone and empty again.
His legs jerked, rising briefly from the slick bedspread; he could feel the miniscule insects crawling over them even if he couldn’t see them. In panic, he looked around the room, trying to find something heavy enough to place on them so that they’d stop twitching. He’d have given anything to have someone sit or lay on them–some kind of weight to keep them grounded.
Sweat rolled from his forehead in droplets that pooled under his neck. The pounding in his head was relentless. Moaning, he raked his hands through his wild hair and turned to his side, bringing his knees up to his stomach. A few years before he’d eaten some bad chicken and ended up in the hospital with salmonella. He was sicker than a dog and thought he might die.
This was worse.
While the pain and sickness was bad, though, it was his mind anguished him the most. Heart beating wildly, thoughts a jumbled mess, panic swelling in his stomach–he felt like that moment in a dream when you’re falling and are just about to hit the bottom. Only the sensation never ended.
Black Raven Inn: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 6) Page 8