“Now let’s picture a radiant fountain of white light cascading down from above your head all around you and pooling beneath your feet.
“We thank you for protection and clarity,” Cookie intoned.
“Especially protection,” Jasper whispered. “Amen.”
“Can we get on with it?” Mary asked in a strained voice.
“Yes of course.” Cookie stood in silence for a moment, then led the way carefully down the hall to the main bedroom. Jasper and Mary followed.
Devoid of much of the clutter of junk that had been in every room of the house, it was nothing but a sad little space. Jasper pitied both men connected to the place – Ray Clippert who had lived lonely here and Jimmy who dropped off into the Big Sleep while trying to mine the poor old house for any hidden gems.
“We are here in strength and peace,” Cookie said.
Her voice was unnecessarily loud, Jasper thought, but maybe the passed-overs had a hard timing hearing the voices of the living. Mary Clippert hovered over Jasper’s shoulder. Jasper could feel that additional heat that the overbearing woman continued to radiate. She could hear Mary’s quick breathing. Jasper stepped closer to Cookie. Mary followed.
Cookie laughed. “They are a little nervous,” she said. “There’s a man here who wants to talk to all of us.”
Jasper’s palms went sweaty. Mary panted like a St. Bernard in the summer.
“Okay, okay. There are two men here actually. One at a time, gentleman. Let me talk to the first father figure. Jasper, it's Jimmy.”
Jasper suppressed a sudden coughing fit. “Tell him everything’s fine at work,” she said.
“He hears you. He already knows that. He’s not here to talk about work,” Cookie said.
Jasper could now smell Mary whose bright red outfit would be sweat-soaked soon if she kept this up. Ugh, sour. At least the woman wasn’t trying to boss them around. Fear of the dead was keeping her usual overbearingness in check.
“What’s he saying already?” Mary demanded, but her voice lacked its usual domineering tone.
Cookie opened her eyes and looked directly at the taller woman. “He says you already know what he wants to say to you.”
“He can damn well tell us all then!” Mary said. Her belligerence had returned.
“Enough!” Cookie said. “He’s allowing the other man to step forward.”
“Oh, please,” Mary said. “I’ve had enough of this mumbo-jumbo. Let’s shut down this magic show.”
“You’re the one who hired us,” Jasper said.
“So I get to set the rules. This is my house – I mean, my father’s house,” Mary said as she backed toward the door.
A wind suddenly blew through the room. Jasper felt both cold and hot. Like a cold wind on a hot day or a hot wind in the winter. Jasper watched as Mary’s neatly coiffed hair rose and fell, one dark lock bolting across her forehead. “Damn you all!” Mary shrieked. She began to cry. Jasper instinctively went to her and put an arm around her waist. Mary pushed her away. “You had a father who loved you!”
“Okay. We’re almost through here,” Cookie said. “All spirits of low energy must now leave. I call on Archangel Michael to complete the clearing. Bless this space and protect it now and always.”
Jasper stood side by side with Cookie for a moment. Mary was nowhere to be seen. “She really freaked out,” Jasper whispered in her sister’s ear.
“I’ve seen it before,” Cookie said. “People who aren’t in touch with their own essence can get really disturbed when the outer realms are present. How ‘bout you, Sis? How are you doing?”
“Surprisingly well.” As she said it, Jasper realized how true it was. “Did you feel that wind too?
“Oh, yeah.”
“It didn’t scare me somehow. I felt surprised but not totally creeped out.”
“You did really well,” Cookie said.
“Yeah, I guess I did. The only thing I wish is that we would have more time to talk to Jimmy.”
“Well, it just wasn’t the right time for that. He’s not stuck here by the way. He’s moved on. He just came back for a visit,” Cookie said.
“That’s a relief. I was kind of afraid that he’d end up – you know.”
“In hell?”
“Well, kind of yeah. No offense, Jimmy, if you’re still listening in, but you were sort of a bastard in some ways,” Jasper said.
Cookie took Jasper’s hand in hers. “He’s back. He says he’s sorry for however he hurt us.” Cookie spoke through her tears. “He just sends his love.”
“Thanks, Jimmy.” She gave her sister’s hand a squeeze. “Thanks, Cookie.”
“See you later, Jimmy. We’ll talk another time,” Cookie said. “And so it is.” She spoke in Jasper’s ear, “Now let’s look for the nut case client and see if we can help her.”
They found Mary in the kitchen, leaning against the sink, staring out the bare window toward the barren backyard.
“How’re you doing?” Cookie asked in a calm, conversational tone.
Mary turned toward them. Her eyes were ringed with red to match her power outfit. “How do you think I’m doing?”
Cookie shrugged. “About as well as can be expected. Do you want to call it quits for the day? Jasper and I can finish the house on our own.”
“Yeah, no problem,” Jasper echoed, unable to look at Mary’s disturbed eyes.
“I must go on. I must,” Mary said, pounding her fist on the metal sink for emphasis.
That must hurt, Jasper thought, but Mary seemed impervious to the pain.
“All right,” Cookie said gently. “We could do the kitchen right now while we’re here.”
Mary squared her shoulders. “Let’s go to the basement. That place was so full of his squirrely mess that who knows what kind of demons are lurking there.”
Cookie said, “I don’t sense any demons in the house. Maybe just some unhappy souls.”
“Well you didn’t know my father,” Mary said. “He was quite the devil.”
Jasper thought over her visit to the man earlier in the day. Sure, he was gruff and messy, and probably housed a multitude of ugly thoughts, but Jasper hadn’t sensed real evil in him. Maybe he had tried to make up for earlier sins as he grew older. Jasper felt beyond her depth when it came to recognizing wickedness. She hoped that someday she would mature beyond her Innocent Orphan persona.
Cookie led the women in another prayer of protection, then they all trooped over to the basement door. Jasper had not noticed before now how scarred the door was. Its right hand edge looked chewed on as if large mice or small rats had been gnawing their way into the cellar for years- or maybe a dog once upon a time. Jasper turned the knob and felt around the corner for the light switch.
Mary shrieked. Cookie inhaled deeply. Jasper, her mouth opened in a silent oh no, stared downward.
Ray Clippert was lying at the foot of the stairs on the basement floor, his blank eyes looking like antique wooden buttons. Jasper forced herself to hurry down to the old man. Ray Clippert sure looked dead. She made herself check for a pulse, first the side of the neck, then the wrist. Nothing. She ran as fast as a cat back up to where Cookie and Mary Clippert waited. “Call 911. Don’t go down there,” she said.
Cookie put in the call on her cell phone.
“You can’t tell me what to do!” Mary pushed Jasper aside and rushed down the stairs. She began yelling, “Oh my God!” Over and over and over again.
Chapter 23
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.” Mary Clippert staggered around the basement. Ray Clippert’s body lay in a half circle near the stairs, reminding Jasper - of all the things that exist in this weird world - of a crescent roll. Not a croissant. For Ray, even in death, looked every inch the American. Red blood splatters decorated his blue jean overalls and white t-shirt. His face was that strange shade of the newly dead that Jasper had seen not too long ago on her own stepfather’s visage. Dead Caucasians took on the hue of granite, not the deathly pa
le cliché color, Jasper thought, or at least dead Caucasian men of a certain age did.
Cookie and Jasper went down the stairs to Mary’s side. “There, there, there, there,” said Cookie. She and Jasper eased Mary to the floor. “No-o-o-,” moaned Mary as she touched down on the cold concrete not far from her father’s body. Mary paddled away with her feet, Cookie’s and Jasper’s hands hooked under her arms, until she had crab-walked herself backwards and resettled on a lower step.
“Why, why, why?” Mary held her head and continued moaning. Then she ceased her noise-making as abruptly as she had started. “Are you definitely, definitely, definitely certain that he’s - ” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Dead? I have a feeling he’s still here with us.”
“You got that right,” Cookie muttered.
Feeling somehow stronger by the moment, Jasper told her sister, “Stay with her.” Then she re-approached the body. There was no movement. Jasper crouched near him to double check for a neck pulse just the same. Tragic death was an oft-used cliché, but it would really be tragic if Mr. Clippert was merely near death and might yet be saved. In spite of her outward calmness, Jasper’s hands had gone icy. She took a deep breath and forced herself to touch the man lying so still. His skin was colder than her own, and unmoving under her touch, almost like a rubber chicken. Things under the skin were at a standstill. No pulse.
Jasper got to her feet and made a conscious effort to avoid wiping her hands down the side of her slacks. She turned back to the steps where Cookie sat near but not touching Mary Clippert.
“Is he really gone?” Mary asked.
Cookie gave her a look, then stared up at her sister. Jasper shrugged. Mary Clippert must have a hard time accepting the death of fathers. She’d said something like that the night Jimmy died.
Jasper spoke in consoling tones. “Yes, he’s gone,” she told Mary.
There was a pause in which it seemed as if all three women and the basement itself held their breaths. One big silent moment of shock. The house had killed again.
Mary lumbered to her feet. “I’d be obliged if you’d leave me alone with him for a minute,” she said.
“I think we should wait together for the police,” Jasper said.
“Not gonna happen, Miss Biggs Mouth,” Mary said. “Know-it-all auctioneers,” she mumbled.
Cookie waved Jasper to back up a couple feet. Further away, Jasper felt a little safer from the angry and confused Mary Clipper.
“I agree with my sister. I don’t think you should be left alone,” Cookie said.
“I won’t be alone. He’s here with me,” Mary said. She held her hand to her heart.
Off on the other side of the basement, a pipe banged. Mary shrieked.
“You were saying?” Cookie asked.
“Maybe you are right. Shall we go wait for the police?” Mary led the way up the steep steps post-haste. Jasper waited with Cookie for just a moment longer while Cookie said a short prayer for the peace of Ray Clippert’s soul. Then they walked more sedately upstairs.
Voices came from the living room. Jasper thought the police were getting better all the time at finding their way to the Clippert house. If this dead man theme continued, they could include the place in some kind of training video. Jasper was surprised to see the Austrings standing with Mary. No police yet.
Jasper glanced at Cookie. Her sister’s face held its habitual look of amused acceptance which Jasper envied. Her own face tended to give away whatever she was feeling, and right now, that was a whole lot of confusion and fear. She hoped she could learn to grow calmer without having to follow in Cookie’s footsteps and learn to commune with the dead. Not that there was anything wrong with dead people. Jasper just wanted to learn how to really live in the now before she started spending time in the later. “What are you doing here?” she blurted out.
Kiefer Austring said, “If this is going to be our house, we need to know what’s going on.”
His wife Emily put a restraining hand on his arm. She moved in front of him. “What my husband means is, ‘What the hell is going on here?’ We understand there’s another dead man. Two bodies in two weeks. Our bank is going to cancel our pre-approval if this keeps up.”
Cookie said, “These bodies belong to our fathers.”
“Well, what are they doing dying here?” Emily asked.
“Couldn’t this have been prevented?” Kiefer Austring demanded.
Jasper turned to Cookie. “Would you speak to them? I don’t think I can.”
Cookie said quietly, “I don’t think rational or empathetic are in their makeup.”
“Yes, couldn’t this have been prevented?” Mary Clippert said. Her eyes were inflamed with a look that Jasper thought she had seen in a silent movie by that old Danish director. What was his name? Dwyer? Dyer? Dreiser!
Jasper was having a hard time keeping her mind on the moment. She stared silently at Mary Clippert and the Austrings.
“It’s ridiculous that you are blaming my sister,” Cookie said.
“Of course you would stand up for her,” Mary said.
“Maybe it’s the house. Maybe the house has something wrong with it,” Emily Austring said.
“There is nothing wrong with my house, my father’s house,” Mary said.
“Nothing other than him falling down the basement stairs,” Kiefer Austring said. “We might have to lower our offering price.”
“How do you know he fell down the steps?” Jasper asked.
“You can’t get away with that!” Mary told the Austrings.
“It’s not as if you ladies were keeping your voices down,” Kiefer said. “Wait and see what we’re able to do. This house is losing value every day. It’s blighted property.”
Mary took a step toward him. Cookie blocked her - the way Jasper had seen her once jump in front of her children when they were little at a busy intersection.
Jasper forced herself to concentrate on the here and now. “So when did you get here?” she asked the Austrings.
“And who you let in?” Mary wanted to know.
“Jasper? Are you in here?” a man’s voice asked. The front door pushed wide open and in walked Esteban and Tony. “Hey, the door was unlocked,” Esteban said. “Grace sent us. She was worried about you.”
Ted Phillips barged in, all big and sweaty. “What the hell is going on now?” he demanded.
Tony shrugged. Esteban said, “He brought us.”
Glenn Relerford came in next. The room had gotten quite crowded. He looked right at Jasper and asked, “Who called 911?”
“I don’t remember. One of them,” Jasper said. Her sloppy mind must be due to delayed shock, she supposed.
“I did,” Cookie said. “There’s a body in the basement.”
“Show me.” Glenn‘s tone was sharp.
Jasper followed them.
Mary dogged her footsteps. “He’s my father,” she said.
The Austrings fell into step behind Mary. “It’s our house,” Kiefer Austring said.
The men from the auction house stayed put in the living room. They did not look eager to join the death parade.
Glenn stopped. Mary Clippert jammed into Jasper’s backside. The Austrings nearly tripped over Mary. “Who found him?” Glenn asked.
Jasper raised her hand. “That would be me.”
“Miss Biggs. Come.”
“Officer, I refuse to be left out in the cold,” Mary said.
“What about us?” the Austrings said in one voice.
Glenn raised his hands as if he were directing traffic at an accident scene. Jasper supposed that, in a way, he was. “You, you, you, you and you,” he said, pointing at Mary, the Austrings, Esteban and Tony. “Stay here.”
“Hey!” Ted Phillips shouted.
“And you,” Glenn said. “Wait here.” He ushered Cookie and Jasper ahead of him.
In the dank cellar, Ray Clippert was right where they had last seen him.
“He’s definitely dead,” Jasper mumbled. Diz
ziness hit her hard. She sank to the floor alongside the body.
When she woke up a short while later, attended to by her sister who held a wet cloth on her forehead, Jasper realized that she had been in what has been called a dead faint. “Am I dead?” she murmured.
“Not even close.” Cookie planted a tender little kiss on her sister’s forehead.
Chapter 24
“Just tell us exactly what happened,” Glenn Relerford said to Jasper.
Jasper sat across from him at a simple metal table in an interview room downtown at the Forest Grove Police Department. When they’d arrived, Jasper, Cookie and Mary Clippert had been escorted to separate rooms to give their versions of what transpired before and after the discovery of Ray Clippert’s body. Both Glenn and the uniformed officer appeared solemn.
“I know this is very serious,” Jasper said. “So I want to be accurate.”
Glenn nodded.
Jasper smiled weakly at his patience. “And I know maybe you think that because I’m an auctioneer and all that possibly I have a good memory for details under stress…” Jasper spoke using a lot of hand gestures, a sure sign of her nervousness. She caught herself and clasped her hands together atop the table. It felt sticky. She brought her hands back down to her lap. She wished for hand sanitizer but didn’t see any in the room. “The thing is that I’m not sure I have it all straight in my head. And I don’t want to do anything to steer you wrong.” She paused. Took a deep breath. And started coughing.
“You want some water, Jasper?” Glenn asked. Everybody knew that Glenn was her neighbor and it was such a small town, no biggie to go by first names. “Sheila, would you?” he asked the officer. She left the room.
Glenn leaned closer to Jasper. “Listen, there’s no way I think you had any kind of involvement in the old guy’s death. This is just following protocol. You understand?”
Jasper nodded through her cough.
“It’s not like I have anything but fond regards for you. You know what I’m saying?”
“I –cough – think so,” Jasper said. There was something about the intensity of his gaze that was doing nothing to calm her cough. She shook her head. “You’re confusing me.”
The Case of the Angry Auctioneer (Auction House Mystery Series Book 1) Page 18