The Keeper (Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper Book 8)

by JL Bryan

  “You don't have to dig to find interesting history! Do you know how many jazz greats played there? How many vaudeville legends? How many comedy greats? And of course they're going to tear it all down to make room for another Starbucks. Friggin' corporations.” Szabo slurped his Budweiser.

  “We're particularly interested in magic shows that played there,” I said.

  “Uh, you should be,” Szabo said, striking up another cigarette for himself. The guy looked about forty, but determined not to see fifty. “Every great magician played there. Howard Thurston. Alexander the Crystal Seer. Harry Blackstone.”

  “I haven't heard of them,” Stacey said.

  “Haven't heard of them? Okay, well about Harry flipping Houdini? Heard of him? Because he performed at the Corinthian once.” Szabo scratched his head. “I think.”

  “Probably not Houdini,” I said. “We don't know his name. He was a touring stage magician around the turn of the twentieth century...and he may have left some dead bodies around.”

  “He was a homicidal maniac,” Stacey added.

  "Fascinating," Szabo said, scratching his sticky-looking red beard.

  "So what we could really use...maybe you have this in your book, or notes or research materials...would be some sort of list of all the acts who performed at the Corinthian over the years. The magicians, in particular. We have some from newspaper ads, but I'm sure there were others we missed."

  "I have a scrapbook of ads from the vaudeville era," Szabo said. "And actually a couple of old accounting ledgers from the 1890s, which I know sounds boring, but if you want to see every act they paid..."

  "That's amazing. I'd really like to look through those. How did you get them?"

  "You act like anybody else wants them. I don't even want 'em, I just don't believe they should be thrown out. You can take them if you want. But you can't take the ads and handbills, any of the good stuff." He opened a door and led us into a fairly dirty kitchen, with dishes piled in the sink. An obese golden lab half-raised its head as we entered, then gave a half-hearted thump of its tail. "Keep quiet, Lanyard," Szabo told him, even though the dog looked like it was going right back into its afternoon nap anyway.

  Szabo opened a door beside his refrigerator, revealing unpainted wood steps down into a dim basement.

  "Well, ladies first," he gestured.

  Stacey and I shared a nervous look. I started down, one hand in my purse, on my stun gun.

  The basement was a madhouse. Action figures, dolls, bobbleheads, Beanie Babies, and luck trolls cluttered the shelves. File cabinets and cardboard boxes overflowed with paper. Bulletin boards were crammed full of overlapping posters and handbills, many of them preserved in plastic. The posters advertised medicine shows, traveling carnivals, and circuses.

  A stained armchair faced an enormous wooden-cabinet TV from the 1980s. A Q-Bert TV tray stood on metal legs next to the chair, supporting more beer cans and an overflowing ashtray. The air reeked of cigarettes.

  "Welcome to my lair," he chuckled, closing the door as he followed us down. Then he winced. "That probably sounded a little creepy, huh? Yeah, sorry it's a gross mess. I've been planning a better organizational system for a couple years."

  "It's fine," I said. Stacey gave a forced smile and nodded. "So what do you have on the Corinthian?"

  "Yeah, right over here. Try not to trip over too much." Szabo led us on a twisting, narrow, cluttered path, past an area heaped with old Weird Tales and True Detective magazines.

  "You've got...a real collection going," Stacey said, picking her way past a precarious tower of old shoe boxes. "Of...stuff."

  "All the little crumbs of American culture," he said. "All the lost pieces. One day I'm opening a museum. Szabo's Museum of Forgotten Cool Stuff. Still working on the name. I've worked up some sample letterhead."

  "Did you grow up around here?" I asked. The sound of his voice had already told me he hadn't.

  "Joliet," he said. "Illinois. But my cousin left me this house about eleven years back. I needed a bigger base for my collecting and trading activity...so, yep. Here we go." He opened the overstuffed drawer of a filing cabinet, rummaged through it, shook his head, slammed it shut again. "I mean...here we go."

  He brought out an enormous three-ring-binder with CORINTHIAN written on a strip of masking tape on the front. Inside were photographs, playbills, programs, jammed thickly inside the plastic photo-album pages.

  "Yeah, it'll take a while to go through those." Szabo gestured toward his green chair next to the TV tray. "Feel free to use my office."

  "I think I'll just stand here," I said. "Better for the circulation."

  "Oh, yeah. I've been meaning to get one of those treadmill desks. If only I could find a vintage one." He lit a cigarette, then picked up a beer from the TV tray and shook it next to his ear. He frowned and set it down again. "I've got an exercise bike upstairs. I use that sometimes. Anybody want a beer?"

  We shook our heads, and he headed upstairs, leaving us to look through decades of ads and images associated with the theater. I took snapshots of any magician we saw.

  He returned with a fresh beer and stood near us, making comments on some of the posters and advertisements: "Oh, yeah, Mr. Skinny and Dr. Fats. Classic, little-known comedy duo, originated in the Catskills Borscht Belt. Never made it to the big screen." Or: "You never saw an act like Marney Jansen and her Whirly Rings. Well, I never saw it either, but I read she'd have a dozen or more big rings going at once...and this was way before Hula-Hoop, she was an innovator...later they added a dog to the act, total disaster..."

  He grew quieter, muttering more and more to himself as we flipped through.

  "Makes you nostalgic for the old days, huh?" he said at one point. I looked over and saw his eyes shiny, almost overrunning with tears. "Simpler times."

  "You weren't alive during the vaudeville era," Stacey said. "Unless you're some kind of vampire who never ages. In which case we should probably get out of your basement."

  "Hey, I like garlic!" Szabo said. "And even if I were a vampire, I'd be one of those cool ones. Like Tom Cruise. Not one of those weird wimpy ones. Like Brad Pitt."

  I was barely aware of what they were saying. I'd stopped on a page, staring at it.

  See the most masterful magician, the most marvelous mentalist, the most extraordinary escape artist ALDOUS THE MYSTERIOUS!

  As with most of the ads, it included a detailed black and white illustration. This one depicted a magician in top hat and tails, accompanied onstage by an attractive young assistant in a short dress adorned with peacock feathers.

  What stood out to me the most was the cabinet levitating in midair between them as “Aldous the Mysterious” waved his magic wand at it. Two sides of the cabinet were visible. One had a black curtain drawn across it. The other side was purple, adorned with stars and planets.

  “Stacey...” I said. “I think this is him.”

  Stacey looked up from her phone, which she'd been sneakily using to keep herself entertained and inattentive to what I was doing. “Oh, yeah. I wonder why he left his cabinet in the old theater?”

  “Maybe he left in a hurry,” I said.

  “He might have gotten into some kind of trouble.”

  “Calvin's checking police records for us. This may help us narrow down the timeframe.” I pointed to the date of the performance written on the poster. November 28, 1909. “Aldous could have performed at the Corinthian on other dates, maybe even other years, but this is a start.”

  “Googling Aldous the Mysterious right now,” Stacey said, her eyes on her phone. “And...a couple things. He doesn't rate his own Wikipedia entry, but 'Magicpedia' has a tab on him. A couple whole paragraphs...It says he was active from around 1891 to 1925, which...the articles notes...is about the time vaudeville died because of talking movies. He did card tricks, levitation, sawing a lady in half—”

  “For real, possibly,” I said. “At least once.”

  “—a little escape artistry, a little '
mentalism.' The article says his act was a 'hodgepodge of popular tricks' but Aldous 'never developed a unique identity or brand of his own.' Hey, that's pretty harsh, Magicpedia writer person. That's about it. No real name given. If he married or had kids, this article doesn't mention it.”

  “Do you mind if I keep this?” I asked Szabo, pointing to the poster.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I said you could take the accounting books only.” He stepped forward and indicated a couple of huge ledgers with crumbling covers inside the drawer. “There you go.”

  “Aw, come on. Please?” Stacey touched his elbow and puppy-dogged her eyes up at him. “It would help us so much. I know you're a nice guy. I can tell.”

  “I have a policy...” He looked down at her for a long moment. She pouted a little. Ugh. If I tried that, he'd probably just kick us out. “I guess you could just have that one, if you really want it...”

  “We do,” Stacey said. “We need it.”

  Szabo sighed. Smoke drifted from his nostrils. “Fine. As long as it's for the greater good.”

  “Totally,” she said, then passed me the yellowed poster, preserved inside plastic laminate.

  We kept looking for any other ads mentioning Aldous, but didn't find any. I would need to check through my own notes about magicians performing at the theater over the years. Aldous the Mysterious might well be in there. He wouldn't have previously stood out against all the names of magicians and mentalists I'd collected.

  “I don't suppose you have anything about the Amazing Antoni Brothers Circus?” I asked Szabo.

  “That rings a bell.” Szabo scratched his head. “I think. Did they have a giant centipede show?”

  “I'm...not sure.”

  We waited while he dug through his circus and carnival memorabilia. Finally he shook his head. “Doesn't look like it. How about these balls? I have some balls from an actual antique bottle game at the early Ringling Brothers circus. Interested?” He juggled three very dirt-stained old balls.

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  “I'm sure there's something...” He returned to rummaging.

  “We should probably get going...” I checked the time. We'd been in the guy's basement for a few hours at this point.

  “No!” Szabo said. Then he blinked, took a breath, and said, “I mean, uh, wouldn't you two rather hang out for a while? I'm sure I could find more...I'm kinda stuck here until my girlfriend comes back with my car. It's been three weeks since she left, so I'm starting to have doubts about whether I'll see it again. I bet she went back to her old boyfriend Brad. Maybe you can figure that out. You're detectives, right?”

  “We don't really do cases involving missing cars and girlfriends,” I said. “We're more focused on...real estate. And property history.”

  “Hey, I'm great with history! Maybe you guys should hire me. Brad thinks he's so cool because he got promoted to manager at Sonic...but if I tell her I'm a detective, she'll definitely think that's cooler. Right?”

  “We aren't really hiring, sorry.”

  Szabo stared at me for a moment, then suddenly slammed his open beer onto the concrete floor of the basement. Foam spurted out in a small puddle around it.

  “Go on, then!” He said, his mood swinging suddenly and unexpectedly to anger, as it tends to do with drunks. “Be like Katie. I don't need anybody around, anyway. I like being alone! It's better to be alone!”

  I grabbed Stacey's sleeve. We hurried toward the stairs, the laminated poster advertising Aldous the Mysterious under my arm.

  "Thanks for your help!" I said, but Szabo didn't answer.

  Outside, the fresh air and bright, late-afternoon sunlight were welcome changes from the smoke-filled gloom within. Szabo's house smelled like a fire in a bar. Not a happy bar with smiling crowds and karaoke, but the grungy kind where old men drink alone in silence.

  We drove out to the highway, gearing up for another night of looking for ghosts. Jacob would be joining us, which usually went a long way toward making things clearer for us. His psychic abilities could pick up on the ghosts' feelings and the conflicts between them, and sometimes details about their lives and motivations.

  With any luck, we'd be much closer to solving both of these cases very soon.

  Chapter Nineteen

  When we arrived at the house, the place was filled with smoke.

  Stacey and I ran to the kitchen, and I recalled where I'd seen the fire extinguisher, hanging on the wall inside the pantry. After my past experiences with fire, I'm always noticing those kinds of things—fire extinguishers, sprinkler systems—especially when looking into huge old houses that aren't necessarily up to code.

  Despite our first impression, and my half-panicked thoughts that Anton Clay must have followed us here, it turned out the house was not on fire. Hayden was in the kitchen, cooking, multiple pans running on the stove. In one, he fried cornmeal-coated fish fillets in a deep puddle of burbling oil. In another, he fried what looked like crab cakes. In yet another pan, hush puppies. In another, onion rings.

  "What are you doing?" I asked, yelling to be heard over the kitchen vent, which was roaring like a dragon but failing to suck out all the smoke created by Hayden's cooking methods. Stacey started opening windows.

  "An ol' time Maryland fish fry, just like I promised," he said. "You can thank me now, later, or both."

  "We're never going to get this smell out of the house," I said. "And look at this...nuclear disaster area over here." I pointed to a number of open cabinets, and the counter beneath them, littered with flour, cornmeal, oil, and probably half the spices from the rack, most of them overturned and spilled.

  "You said I could buy some stuff and cook it," he replied.

  "Yeah, but I didn't know you were so terrible at it. I was operating on incomplete information."

  "I'll tell Jacob that supper's included." Stacey pulled out her phone and left the smoke-filled kitchen.

  "Jacob?" Hayden asked.

  "Our psychic. I told you he was coming. You just ignored me because you were too busy looking at your phone."

  "Huh?" Hayden asked, looking at his phone.

  "Don't set any fires," I told him. "I'm going to go find all the air freshener in the house. I hope they have buckets of it."

  Hayden continued his frying. Jacob arrived and Stacey went to greet him.

  I stood in the amphitheater-sized living room—which reeked of fried fish at this point, like the rest of the house—and looked out at the beach and the lighthouse. I wondered what mysteries we might uncover tonight.

  "Hey, amazing place," Jacob said, as he walked in on Stacey's arm. He looked up at the enormous bright-paper sculptures hanging from the ceiling, the two-story glass wall, the long curve of the couch big enough to seat a major rapper's entire entourage. "You can really smell the ocean."

  "That's the kitchen, unfortunately," I said. "Thanks for coming out, Jacob."

  "I understood there would be free food," he said.

  "There is," I said. "And we can actually pay you a consultant's fee on this one. I've been instructed by my boss to soak the client." I was pretty annoyed at Alyssa for holding back information and making the investigation extra difficult. If she wanted to keep costs down, she should have helped speed things along instead of throwing up barriers.

  "Sweet," Jacob said. "That smell isn't the dinner, though, right?"

  "We brought in a private chef," I said, starting towards the kitchen, where we would eat at the table in the corner. The dining room was full of antique furniture and decorations that I wanted to avoid damaging. "We probably should have cooked in the guest house kitchen instead of here, but it was already too late by the time we arrived."

  Hayden greeted Jacob heartily, probably glad to have another customer for the ridiculous amount of food he'd fried up. Jacob looked at the heaps of golden fried fish, golden fried crab cakes, and golden fried onion rings, winced a little, and touched his stomach as though imagining tremendous heartburn to come.

  "Awesom
e, huh?" Hayden said. "And there's plenty for everyone!"

  We gathered around the table, where Hayden served us dripping baskets of fried things, accompanied by drinks he'd bought at the little island grocery store. We had our choice of Cheerwine and Mello Yello.

  Jacob and Stacey blanched as he set plates heaping with the fried footstuffs, all of it sweating gallops of grease, slowly forming a puddle underneath the onion rings and hush puppies.

  "Don't forget my secret-recipe tartar sauce." Hayden grabbed a gallon-sized glass bowl filled with what looked like entire jars of mustard, mayonnaise, and relish, halfheartedly stirred together, topped with a big spurt of ketchup. It was appalling.

  Before Jacob could object, Hayden scooped out a heap of the tartar sauce and splatted it onto Jacob's plate, burying the three fish fillets Hayden had given him. Jacob gaped at the mayonnaisey pile.

  Stacey looked outraged for a moment, and I wondered if this was some sort of pathetic male-dominance display on Hayden's part—trying to make Jacob, the other male, look beneath him with a little bullying. There was a tense moment, but Hayden seemed altogether unaware of it, and more or less broke it by happily slopping an equal amount of the white sauce onto his own plate.

  "So, Jake," Hayden said. "Did your girlfriend tell you whose house you're at? Whose plates you're eating off right this second?"

  "Of course not," Stacey said quickly. "He's our psychic consultant, Hayden. No advance information."

  "Oh, duh," Hayden said, talking through a mouthful of greasy fried fish. He poked a mustard-dripping fork at Jacob. "When you find out though, your mind is gonna be like pow! Bam! Or more like...zap! Am I right, ladies? Zap!"

  "Enough," I said. "Don't harass our psychic."

  "Who's harassing? I thought we were just chilling, being bros. Right, Jake?"

  "It's usually Jacob," Jacob said. "But yeah, no problem. I can already tell you there's a lot here..." He glanced down at the gobs of mustardy mayonnaise covering his food. "Maybe we should get started."