A Prickly Predicament (Mad River Mystery Series Book 1)

by Constance Barker

  Shadows grew long over Mad River Old Town. The sun had almost fully set, and I was really starting to get nervous. Wendy moved around the store, helping Reverend O’Dell to carefully light each and every candle. Nathan and Nick were conscripted to set up a heavy oak table right in the middle of the store where Adam Gaunt had last stood as a living, breathing man. They placed a single wooden chair near the table for Reverend O’Dell to sit in during the exorcism.

  The ghosts were all in a frenzy, as nervous as I was. No, nervous was too pale a word for what we all now felt. Dread seized us all, almost paralyzing in its power. My mind froze; my brain refused to think. I knew I was missing something important, but what it was continued to elude me. There’s no such thing as a perfect crime, I reminded myself.

  “Someone get the lights,” Reverend O’Dell said, and Nathan, who was standing nearest the light switch, obliged, and suddenly the interior of the Mad River General Store was bathed only in candlelight. I might have been mistaken, but just before the electric lights went out, I thought I saw smug satisfaction alight on Nathan’s features, a haughty look of victory that sparked a jolt of anger and awakened my drowsing neurons. I welcomed the surge of adrenalin that coursed through my veins.

  “Harriet,” I whispered, quickly approaching her where she stood by the store’s counter. “I need to go out for a moment and check on something,” I told her. “Will you let me back in when I get back?”

  “Can’t it wait, Shelby?” she whispered. “The exorcism is just about to start.”

  “No! It can’t wait!” I whispered urgently. “Please, Harriet.”

  She gave me a searching look as if she suddenly understood my meaning. With a single pronounced nod, “Yes, Shelby, I’ll let you back in,” she whispered. “But hurry!”

  Just before the door clicked shut behind me, I caught sight of a flurry of ghostly activity near the floorboards at the rear of the historic section, near an outside wall. A part of me wanted to go and see what was happening there, but I had other urgent matters pressing on me at that moment.

  Back behind my desk at the Mad River Old Town business office, I quickly booted up my computer again. “Come on! Come on!” I urged it. I was going to have to talk Matt into investing in a faster internet connection one of these days. The computer seemed to take an eternity to become itself again, but finally I was able to click into my search history from earlier that day. Yes! I exclaimed silently as I found what I was looking for. There it was, the missing connection. Now it all made sense.

  I darted back over to the general store. Harriet waited just inside the front door. “Hurry!” she whispered, rushing me into the store. “You’re just in time!”

  Chapter Eleven: Mopping Up

  I switched on the lights.

  “Hold on!” Reverend O’Dell shouted. “We’re about to have an exorcism here.”

  “Maybe not,” I answered calmly, and then a little more forcefully, I called out, “Nathan, did you kill Adam?” Nathan was halfway across the room from me, so I had to raise my voice a little, but I didn’t care. I wanted everyone to hear me, even the people standing outside in the street.

  “What are you talking about?” Nathan protested. I could see Adam hovering near him.

  “Wait a minute, Shelby,” said Nick, “Will you please explain to me what’s going on?”

  My throat clogged with exasperation. There was just so much to say. I had to remind myself that Nick couldn’t see what I was able to see, couldn’t hear what I was able to hear. I struggled to slow my thoughts down so that I could form them into words that would come out of my mouth in a somewhat intelligible fashion. “Come with me, Nick,” I said, grabbing his hand and leading him toward the modern hardware section in the rear of the building. “Don’t let Nathan leave,” I shouted toward Matt over my shoulder.

  Obligingly, both Matt and George moved their burly bulks to block the front door, the store’s only exit. Fortunately, George was not so inebriated that he couldn’t participate in the evening’s festivities, and for that I was truly grateful. As a matter of fact, George had sobered up so much that he was starting to look mean. Gray and balding, he stood next to the younger sandy-haired Matt, only swaying a little now and then. Both men crossed their arms across their chests and blocked the exit, as stalwart as mountains. Nathan didn’t even try to get past them, but merely stood in front of them, impassive if not yet defeated. Adam floated nearby.

  Reverend O’Dell stood near the heavy oak table in the middle of the room looking frustrated and flabbergasted. Everyone else watched, silently aghast.

  “Don’t worry, Nathan,” Annabelle soothed. “I’m sure it’s all just a misunderstanding.”

  “You come, too, Annabelle,” I said. “I want you to see this.”

  Nick and Annabelle followed me into the back room where I showed them the laser pen where it peeked out from under the bin of hacksaws. Using a tissue to hold it so as to keep from leaving my fingerprints on it, I pulled it out and clicked it on. Sure enough, a grid of green dots was projected onto the front of the nearest shelf.

  “What’s that?” Annabelle asked.

  “It’s a ghost-finding laser pen,” I told her. “I found it here this afternoon.”

  “Oh,” said Nick. “Someone could have accidentally dropped it here, right?”

  “Someone like Nathan,” I told him. “Now look.” I pointed to the saw. “See that? Look closely.”

  “What is it, Shelby? I don’t see what you’re pointing to,” said Annabelle.

  “Those metal fragments there, see?”

  “I don’t get it,” Nick said.

  “Don’t touch them,” I warned, “or the saw, either. They could be evidence.”

  Nick looked perplexed. “Shelby,” he said, “I still don’t understand. What are you getting at here?”

  “Nick,” I said, “didn’t you search the trash bins behind the stores in Old Town like I told you?”

  “No,” he answered sheepishly. “I checked with the chief. He didn’t think it was necessary.”

  “But, Nick,” I argued, “there’s evidence there.”

  “How do you know that, Shelby?” he asked.

  “Never mind that now,” I told him. “Annabelle, has there been a trash pickup this week for Old Town?”

  “Shelby, you know that always happens only on Mondays,” she said. She looked at me searchingly. Good, I thought. Of course I knew that, but I needed to confirm there hadn’t been a trash pickup since Mathias’s discovery. “What is really going on, Shelby?” Annabelle sounded concerned.

  “Nick, you have got to search the trash,” I repeated. “Behind Zaharako’s,” I said emphatically.

  “What will I find there, Shelby? Tell me that,” he challenged.

  Uh-oh, I thought. Are we having our first lovers’ quarrel? We aren’t even lovers, at least not yet. I tried to soften my tone. “You’ll find,” I told him, “some things that were cut with that saw right there.”

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “I am ninety-nine percent sure,” I told him.

  “And these things that are cut, whatever they are, will prove that Nathan killed his business partner, his childhood friend?”

  “There’s more,” I said. I pulled up the internet on my phone. Finding what I was looking for, I held my phone out for both Annabelle and Nick to see. I showed them first an encyclopedic site that credited Nathan with the invention of a gadget widely used by ghost hunters. “But look,” I said, and pulled up a copy of an amended patent of the same gadget. “Nathan’s name is nowhere on this amended patent,” I told them, “but Adam’s is.” I went on, “On the original version of the patent, Nathan is listed as the sole inventor.” I paused to let that sink in.

  After the space of several heartbeats, “So Nathan could have had a motive,” Annabelle said quietly.

  “More than one,” I told her. “Look at this.” On Nathan’s page on a social media site, I scrolled down to the picture I’d seen ea
rlier. In it, Nathan and a pretty girl gazed adoringly into each other’s eyes. “Okay,” I said pointing to the girl in the photo, “remember that face.” Then I pulled up Adam’s page on the same site. Quickly, I found the other photo I was looking for: a picture of the same girl, this time with a desperate look in her pretty eyes, hanging onto Adam’s beefy arm while he stared off into the distance. “The photo on Nathan’s page is earlier by several weeks than the photo on Adam’s page.”

  “I see,” said Nick, and I could tell that he was starting to. “I guess I’d better get our guys busy with searching through the trash,” he said. “Behind Zaharako’s, you said?”

  I nodded, grateful that, for now, he didn’t press me to tell him how I knew just where to search. “But there’s even more, Nick,” I said. “You’ve got to see this.” I led Nick and Annabelle out to the main part of the store to where the baling twine was kept. “If you look at those spools closely,” I told them, “you’ll see that one of the spools of twine has come unwound.” Having recovered from their momentary shock, several of the others gathered around us so they could hear what we were talking about.

  “How do you know this?” asked Annabelle.

  “I’m just observant,” I said. “Just look.” Sure enough, the twine on one of the spools of baling twine had clearly come unwound. “That’s the one,” I told them. “That’s the spool that fell—or was pulled—onto Nathan.” I turned to Nick. “Aren’t there some tests you could run on this spool to prove that this is indeed the one?”

  He nodded. “Yes, we can send it off for DNA testing,” he said.

  I noticed then a strange humming sound and smiled in satisfaction when I turned to see what it was. Nathan, in his consternation at being confronted, had absently left the cameras running. All three of his cameras sat on their tripods whirring away, aimed at different locations in the store. Everything we did in the historic section was being recorded.

  Nick turned and looked toward Nathan, who still stood in front of Matt and George by the front door. Adam still hovered near Nathan, but now the ghost was watching Nick and Annabelle and me as well as his old partner. He appeared to be listening intently. “So he pulled this down on himself—,” Nick started, pointing at the spool of baling twine.

  “To make it seem as if ghosts were attacking him,” finished Annabelle.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Just then, Jessamine swooped toward me, insistently demanding my attention. “Shelby, you’ve got to see this!” she cried, motioning for me to follow her. Instantly, I grabbed Nick’s hand and followed where she led.

  “Shelby!” Nick protested.

  “Just come on, Nick,” I shouted. “You, too, Annabelle.” Both of them followed, looking confused.

  Jessamine led me, with Nick and Annabelle following close behind, to the rear of the main section, where I had seen the flurry of ghostly activity a little earlier that evening.

  “Tell them to stand back, Shelby!” Jessamine warned.

  “Everyone keep away!” I cried, but nearly everyone else followed anyway, curious as to what was going on. The only exceptions were Reverend O’Dell, who stood stalwart near the old oak table; Matt and George, who both still blocked the front door; and Nathan, who stood with fists clenched, glowering at the two burly guys blocking the exit, poised to bolt at the merest opportunity. Adam hovered very near his face, trying to catch his eye.

  “Look!” Jessamine said, and I looked to where she pointed. At first I saw nothing, but then I knelt to take a closer look. That was when I saw the thing she pointed to, and I understood immediately why it had had alarmed her so. An ingenious-looking contraption composed of springs and wires, so tiny as to be almost invisible, nestled in the joint between the floorboards and the lowest wooden plank of the exterior wall. It was easy to see how the police investigators had missed it.

  “Look, Nick,” I said.

  Nick gave me an odd look. “I don’t see anything, Shelby. What’s going on?” he asked. I stood up and pointed, and he stepped closer to the evil-looking device.

  Just as he was about to step onto the floorboard nearest the gizmo, a sudden apprehension grabbed hold of me. “Stop, Nick!” I yelled, but too late. Suddenly, a loud click resounded throughout the store. The floorboard near the apparatus sprang away, releasing dozens of sharp, deadly projectiles up into the air. “Nick, are you okay?” I cried as soon as I could catch my breath.

  “Almost got me,” he gulped, clearly shaken. The savage missiles had missed him by a mere hairsbreadth.

  I looked around. Everyone else appeared to be okay, too. I whirled toward the front of the store. “What were you trying to do here, Nathan?” I demanded.

  “What?” he protested. “Why are you asking me?”

  “You have the skills and the expertise to build a contraption like that. What were you thinking? What were you planning?”

  “You’re just a crazy little snoop,” he shouted. “You don’t know anything.”

  “I know Adam Gaunt stole your invention,” I told him, and then more quietly I said, “and I know Adam Gaunt stole your girl.”

  At the mention of his girl, Nathan’s features contorted with rage. “Stop haunting me!” he shouted.

  Oh, so you can see him, I thought to myself, suddenly realizing that Nathan was no longer talking to me but to Adam. To everyone else it looked as if he were just boarding the crazy train.

  “I thought I could get rid of you by killing you,” he yelled, “but you just won’t go away! Our show was fizzling out because of you. You ruined every single chance we ever had to make it to the bigtime.” Everyone in the store, including me, looked on appalled as he raged on. “Your overspending, your reckless actions—your despicable womanizing—set us back time and time again!”

  Adam, still floating near his old friend, appeared distressed, too, and I understood why. How would it feel, I wondered, to have so deeply wounded your closest friend that he felt he had no recourse but to murder you?

  Nathan broke down then, broke down completely, crumpling to the floor and sobbing as if his heart would break. And why wouldn’t it? Friendless, loveless, and humiliated in front of all of Mad River, Nathan Bright was a beaten man and he knew it. “Okay, okay,” he said between sobs. “I killed him.” Everyone in the store was transfixed, stunned. The whole place was completely silent for the space of several heartbeats. “But he had it coming,” Nathan sobbed.

  “But that contraption by the back wall,” I pressed. “What was that about?”

  Nathan turned and glared at me, then pointed at Nick and then at Reverend O’Dell. “For him,” he said, “and him.”

  My heart lurched into my throat and I felt nauseous. Reverend O’Dell blanched and immediately began putting his exorcism materials away. What was clear in everyone’s mind, ghosts and living humans alike, was that Nathan Bright was a very sick man.

  Nick pulled a pair of handcuffs out of a pocket. “Nathan Bright,” he said, snapping them into place around the sobbing man’s wrists, “you’re under arrest for the murder of Adam Gaunt.”

  ~.~

  The ghosts of Mad River Old Town were in a celebratory mood that evening, and I found some time to be alone with all of them after everyone else but Harriet had gone home. Harriet busied herself with setting the front section of the store to rights, very thoughtfully leaving me alone with the ghosts in the rear section. Every single ghost congratulated me endlessly and thanked me profusely for a job well done.

  “We did it together,” I said more than once. “Don’t we make a great team?”

  Josiah was the only one who was less than gracious. “I told you not to trust that man, didn’t I?” he cackled. Josiah was crankier than usual, and I suspected it was because Gladys was clearly flirting with Adam, despite the fact that Adam was trying to ignore her.

  “Yes, you did,” I agreed.

  “But you wouldn’t listen,” he scolded. “You thought he would help you find the killer.” He laughed derisively. />
  “And all he did was throw me off track,” I said. “I have to agree you have a point.”

  “I’m so sorry you were murdered,” Gladys said to Adam. “That’s a terrible way for a life to end.”

  “Well, we all have to die sometime, don’t we?” said Adam. He was plainly uncomfortable as the target of her coquetry. Turning away from her, he addressed the others. “Listen, everyone,” he said, “I need to say goodbye now.”

  “Oh, can’t you stay awhile?” Gladys pleaded.

  “No, I can’t,” he said. “Mad River was never my home. I feel I’m being called … elsewhere.”

  “Where will you go?” asked Jessamine.

  “I’m not sure,” he answered.

  “Will you write when you get there?” pressed Gladys. Josiah rolled his eyes.

  “Probably not,” Adam said.

  Mathias and Phineas both did the gracious thing and pumped Adam’s hand heartily in farewell. Jessamine gave him a friendly hug. Josiah turned his back and harrumphed. Gladys looked crestfallen.

  Adam turned to face us all. “I did some serious harm in my lifetime,” he said, “and I need to repair as much of the damage I’ve caused as I can. I’ve got some work to do.”

  “Be safe,” they told him. “Farewell!”

  Turning to me, he said, “I want to thank you again, Shelby, for helping me to make the transition. It would have been much harder without your kindness and understanding.”

  “I’m glad I could help, Adam,” I said. “I wish you well.”

  And suddenly, Adam was gone without a trace. Gladys gasped her disappointment then drifted closer to Josiah, who looked slightly less irritable than he had a moment earlier.

  After a few quiet moments, “Phineas and I are just so grateful to you, Shelby,” Jessamine said, and Phineas nodded enthusiastically.