He steps back, but it’s too late. My loyal companion, guard dog extraordinaire, stops sniffing the corner of the kiosk and snaps to attention, ears perked, growling fiercely. Before I can jerk him away, he snaps at the guy, his little pearly-white teeth bared ferociously, all ten pounds of him straining at the leash.
With a litany of curse words, the stranger jumps back, almost crashing into the side of the coffee kiosk. “Get that thing away from me.” He glares angrily at my little mutt as he straightens himself up.
“Oh jeez, sorry. Bear, well, he doesn’t like men very much. He wouldn’t hurt you, though. He’s really sweet.” It’s mostly the truth. He hasn’t bitten anyone since that unfortunate incident with Russ.
“Yeah, well, I’m not sure I believe you.” One of his dark eyebrows arches as a bemused expression crosses his face. “Wait, did you say his name was Bear?”
I shrug. “I think it suits him.”
“Uh huh, sure.” He gives us an even wider berth as Fiona hands him his coffee.
A couple of minutes later, Fiona hands me a cardboard cup holder with the drinks, and I turn around, hoping to catch one more glimpse of the intriguing eye candy, but he’s already driving away, his brake lights winking as he pauses before pulling out of the parking lot. Oh well, it’s probably a good thing I didn’t get the chance to talk to him. I don’t need complications like that. I need to get caffeine into my sister, stat, then prepare to meet the girl behind the video camera: ShelleBelle03.
AT A QUARTER TO TWO, I stride into The Barbecue Inn, a little brick joint on the outskirts of town. A huge smoker that’s shaped like a pig chugs away in the parking lot, smoke pumping out of its rear, with a smattering of cars clustered around it. Someone must have had a great time building that thing. My stomach rumbles, but the laptop bag swinging at my side reminds me that I’m not here to eat. I have work to do.
Too bad I feel my resolve already wavering. It’s been a long time since I’ve had good barbecue. Jess would hate this place. Anything that isn’t strictly healthy isn’t on her menu. Russ would love it, though. I make a mental note to get a takeout order. My stomach growls again. Okay, I know I’m here to meet the client, but maybe I can grab a quick bite at the same time. Multi-tasking, right? Besides, I have no idea where our next case will be. This might be my only chance at good barbecue for a long time. It would be a crime not to try some.
“Miss Baker, over here!” A cute bleached-blond cheerleader-type waves her arms frantically from one of the booths along the back wall. She’s maybe sixteen years old, tops. My stomach sinks. Crap. Where is a sixteen-year-old going to get the money to pay us? Russ told me I needed to fix the website so clients pay before we take on the investigation, but I’d been too lazy. Just looking at the youthful exuberance sitting at the table, draining my wallet as we speak, makes my head hurt. Oh well, I’m here now, and I might as well make the most of it, even if it doesn’t pay me a dime.
I paste a confident smile on my face and quickly cross the black-and-white tiled floor.
Shelley MacIver stands up and reaches out to shake my hand. “I’m so excited to meet you!” Her eyes light up with excitement. She gestures at the booth. “Please, sit. I’m sure you have a lot of questions.”
I barely resist arching my eyebrows at her remark. That doesn’t even begin to cover it. “I have a few, yes, Miss MacIver.” I pull out my laptop. Maybe she can start with how she’s going to pay us. Nah, I’ll wait until after I get to know her a bit.
“Call me Shelley.” She beams. “I can’t believe you’re actually here.”
“Please, call me Meredith.” I open a new document so I can take notes and then take out my handheld voice recorder. “Do you mind if I record our conversation? That way, I don’t miss anything.”
She shakes her head. “That’s fine.”
I’ll have to get her parents’ permission to put her on camera, if she’s as young as I think she is. Double crap. “Great. What can you tell me about the house?”
She bites her lip, as if nervous.
“It’s okay. Just say it. We deal with strange phenomena all the time. There’s nothing you can say that I haven’t heard before.” I try to make my voice sound encouraging, but I don’t know if she believes me.
Shelley takes a deep breath. “My mom disappeared when I was two. I... I think it’s her that’s haunting the house.”
I sit back, fingers paused over keyboard. That explains why she called the specter “Mom.” My mind flashes back to three years ago, the night my parents disappeared. A feeling of unease grows in the pit of my stomach. Maybe we shouldn’t have taken this job.
Shelley plows ahead, oblivious to my reaction. “I was born in that house. My dad says my mama had me in the middle of the night, during one of the worst storms he’d ever seen. My brother was six when I was born and nine when Mama disappeared. It... It was in the middle of the night. I don’t remember it, but Dad told me about it years later. We moved out a couple years after she left, into the caretaker’s cottage on the other side of the property, and we haven’t been there since.”
“Except for when you filmed the video.”
She gulps. “I had to go in there, you know? I... I don’t know what happened to my mama, but after watching your show so much, I had to try.” She frowns. “I’m sorry, that probably doesn’t make any sense, but I had to do something. She wouldn’t have just left us. She loved us.”
Oh yes, I know that feeling all too well. Okay, Meredith, time to change the subject. This is hitting too close to home. “How long has the house been in your family?”
Shelley pauses as if thrown off. “It was my grandma’s house. My great-grandpa built it for my great-grandma.” She smiles wistfully. “I never got to meet them, of course, or my grandparents. They died before I was born. I’ve heard they loved each other deeply, though.”
My anxiety fades. Good. This is a safe topic, something the subscribers will love. Tragic love stories are big earners.
A waitress, a young brunette with bright-red lips and light-green eyes, stops at our table. “Hey, Shelley, ready to order yet?”
Shelley glances at me. “Do you want anything? They have awesome food here.”
“Sure. How about you order for me? I have no idea what’s good.” It’s a tactic I’ve used before to have the locals order for me or eat what they’re eating. I’ve eaten at way too many crappy restaurants to chance my digestive system over what looks good on a menu.
“Okay.” Shelley turns to the waitress, but before she can order, the door to the restaurant slams open. The same hot guy that Bear almost bit storms toward us. Our waitress’s eyes widen, and she backs away from him. I don’t blame her.
“What in the hell are you doing?” He gestures at me, fire dancing in his eyes. “You hired a fucking ghost hunter to invade our house? You’re insane.”
Shelley’s this guy’s sister? I know it’s a small town, but man, the odds of this are astronomical. Or it’s just your bad luck talking.
“Graham? I-I...” Shelley’s eyes well up with tears. “I have to know what happened to her. Come on, doesn’t it bother you?” she tries to plead with him. “It’s our mother, for God’s sake.”
He gestures at me. “But her? Shit, Shelley. Why didn’t you say something? I could’ve told you what a terrible idea this is. But no, I had to hear it from one of your friends at the gas station. Jesus Christ.” He runs his fingers through his hair. “Does Dad know? There is no way on God’s green earth that he’d be okay with this girl”—he sneers, all traces of his former humor gone—“investigating any part of our house. Were you going to sneak her in, too?”
Lovely, not only are we probably not getting paid, but we can’t even investigate the house. This is getting better and better. I scoot away from this guy’s, Graham’s, tirade.
Shelley’s bottom lip quivers. “I... I don’t know. But I saw her, I swear.”
Graham drags a chair from an adjoining table to ours and settles into i
t, resting his arms on the back. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Eyes filling with hope, she gives him a tremulous smile. She recounts the story of sneaking into the house and taking the video of the figure descending the stairs. Graham mutters something under his breath. I can’t tell if he thinks she’s delusional, or if he thinks she’s telling the truth. If it were my sister, and I hadn’t seen the video, I would be worried too.
I eye the tape recorder on the table, inwardly glad that I had the foresight to turn it on. This will make for entertaining listening later, especially after I tell Jess and Ross about meeting Graham first at the coffee shop. They’ll really get a kick out of this.
After she tells him about sending us the video, he turns to me. The rage in his eyes is gone, but now they’re filled with distrust and irritation. “And that’s where you come in.” It’s not a question, but the way he said it makes it sound like one.
I nod. “Yup.” I hold out my hand to shake his, but he stares at it without taking it. So much for Southern hospitality. “My name’s Meredith Baker, proprietor of Coast to Ghost Paranormal Investigations. We reviewed the footage your sister sent us and decided it was worth checking out.”
He snaps his fingers. “Just like that?”
“Pretty much. We get a lot of submissions, but we were in between cases, and the video your sister sent looked interesting. Besides”—I decide to put some of the blame on Shelley so he’s not quite as irritated with me—“your sister assured me that we would be able to investigate the house, and that she could pay us our normal rate for our services.”
Shelley looks down, caught in her lie. “I... I’ll find some way to pay you, I promise. And the house does sort of belong to me, so I’m sure you’ll be able to investigate.”
“Jesus, Shelley,” Graham says. “You lied to her and her team in order to get them to come? And you have to pay her for this shit?”
She shrugs, hunching her shoulders in defeat. “I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t know how else to get her down here. She’s real. You have to believe me, Graham. I’ve seen what her team can do.”
“I’m sure she’s exactly what she says she is,” he says, contempt dripping from his words.
I snap my laptop shut. I’ve heard enough. “Sorry, gang, while this has been fun, it’s not what we signed up for. I’m out of here.” I slide out of my seat and shove my laptop and voice recorder into my bag. If we can’t investigate the house, even if we don’t get paid, then there really is no reason for me to be here, and it pisses me off that we’ve wasted all of this time for nothing.
Shelley reaches out to stop me, but I ignore her. Yeah, I’m done. Let them fight about it without me here. First thing on my list when I get back to that crappy hotel is rigging up some sort of prepay system on the website.
Graham follows me to the door. “I’m sorry about that.” He grimaces. “My sister means well, but she still shouldn’t have lied to you.” He pulls out his wallet. “Can I at least cover your hotel room and gas?”
I shake my head. “No. Contrary to popular belief, we have a legitimate business and a good-sized following. We’re not the fakes or the hacks you think we are. It’s not our fault your sister lied to us. That’s your problem now. Have a good day, Mr. MacIver.”
Chapter 3
On the way back to the hotel, I call Russ. If my sister’s in one of her moods, this will only make it worse, and I don’t feel like dealing with her.
“How did it go?” Russ asks.
I take a deep breath then tell him about what happened as well as how Graham showed up and Shelley finally admitted that she didn’t have the money.
“Shit,” he mutters. “So what you want to do now?”
I mull over this question for a few seconds until I reach the hotel. “Go home, I guess. Unless you have another submission for our broadcast?”
“I’m working on lining something up in two week, but I thought we had this week covered. Do you want to take a short hiatus or use a pre-filmed segment?”
I groan. Every time we skip a week, which isn’t often, we lose subscribers, and we can’t afford for that to happen. They’re used to one broadcast a week along with all of the preliminary footage and evidence we’ve gathered, useful or not, for them to comb through themselves. If we don’t have a show, we lose subscribers, and subscribers equal money. “Shit” is right. Shelley’s lie is fixing to be expensive for us. “Let’s talk about it when I get back to the hotel. I’ll be right there.”
“See you in a minute,” Russ says before hanging up.
I take a few extra minutes in the van, selfishly hoping that he’ll tell my sister before I have to. Lucky for me, based on the look on her face when I open the door, he’s done just that.
“I could just kill her,” Jess says, shooting me a murderous glance as if this is somehow my fault. Thanks, sis. There is no way I could’ve known that Shelley was so young and was lying about having permission to let us in the house. We’ve never run into this problem before.
“We’ve got to do something,” Russ says. “We can’t let the fans down.” From the tone of his voice, I think he’s feeling the pinch, too. I’ll still make sure he’s paid, but there’s little for extras right now.
Our old fallback plan rises to the top of my mind. It’s better than nothing. “We’re in the South, right?”
Jess’s eyes latch onto mine as understanding dawns on her. “No. Absolutely not.” She shakes her head vehemently.
“Come on. There’s got to be a creepy old cemetery around here. We can start in the evening, right before dusk, so we don’t arouse too much suspicion. Then, we can go lights out at night, and investigate that way. The cops won’t even know we’re there.”
Russ chuckles, some of the anxiety and stress relaxing from his face. “And if they did find us, it wouldn’t be the first time we got kicked out of a cemetery. It’s definitely not as good as investigating the MacIver house, but it’s better than nothing.”
“I hate you both.” Jess reaches down, picks up my dog, and wraps her arms around him. “If I trip and bash my head open over a headstone, I’m coming back to haunt you.”
Russ raises his hand. “I call dibs on investigating that haunting.” Before she can give him a snarky answer, he grabs my laptop and sets it on the cheap laminate desk. Then he pulls up a chair and starts looking up different local places we could investigate tonight. It won’t be as good as checking out the house, especially given that video Shelley sent, but he’s right that it’s better than nothing.
It doesn’t take long for Russ to find an old cemetery. In the South, they’re pretty much everywhere. But before he can pull up the map so we can type it into the GPS, there’s a knock on the door. Shelley MacIver stands on the other side, her face flushed and her eyes downcast.
“What are you doing here?” I don’t even try to keep the bitterness from my voice.
“I... I came to apologize. I never should have lied to get you here, but I was desperate.” She shakes her head quickly. “Not that that’s any excuse, but it is the truth. I’ve gone so long without knowing what happened to my mom that I feel like I have to find out one way or the other.”
I fold my arms across my chest. “You’re right, that’s no excuse. You lied twice to get us down here. Once about paying us, and once about having permission to enter the house. How were we supposed to investigate when we never had permission in the first place?”
“I don’t know. But I do know that my mom wouldn’t have just left us like that. I’m sick of bottling everything up and pretending everything is okay. I’m sorry for lying, but I’m not sorry that you’re here.”
I have to admire her spunk. My sister is the same way, when she’s not whining or complaining about something. “Well, you said your apologies, now you can go home with a clean conscience.” I start to shut the door in her face, but she sticks her foot in the crack to stop it from closing.
“Wait, please, just give me a second.”
<
br /> “Is everything all right?” Russ calls out behind me.
“Oh yeah, peachy.” I slide outside and shut the door. Given how angry he and Jess were about Shelley’s deception, meeting her for the first time right now probably isn’t a good idea.
I raise my eyebrows. “Did you suddenly come into enough money to pay us or get permission from your dad?”
Her cheeks redden. “I’ll figure something out with the money, I promise. I did talk to my dad, though, and he said we could check out the house.”
It’s still not as good as getting paid, but investigating the house would be better than nothing. If, and it’s a big if, she’s telling the truth, we could still salvage this situation. However, investigating the house with video and history would be a lot better than putting out some half-assed investigation of a cemetery with no history of being haunted. “I thought he didn’t want us there?”
“I talked him into it,” Shelley says. “He said as long as you don’t touch anything, it’ll be fine.” Her eyes glaze over with tears. She needs this. My resistance wavers.
If the house is a shrine to the mother, it’s interesting, but not exactly something unusual. In times of love and loss, people hold on to whatever they can. “Let me talk to the team and see what they think.”
Shelley gasps. “Of course. Who came with you?” We have four team members besides myself, so that’s a fair question.
“Russ and Jess.”
Her eyes widen. She waits expectantly for me to let her in, but I still haven’t totally forgiven her.
“I’ll be right back.”
She nods, her expression defeated. I almost feel bad for her, but she brought this on herself. Even if she’d told us the truth, it would have been tempting to come. That was a damn good video.
I shut the door then turn to Russ and Jess, trying to find the right words. “Shelley said she got permission for us to investigate.”
Like a Bad Penny Page 2