by Elise Sax
She rubbed her hands together in anticipation of kneecapping a ghost.
“I don’t think he saw me,” I said leaning against the wall in a small alcove. Tilly followed me and crossed her arms in front of her chest.
“You’re ridiculous,” she chastised me.
“Huh? You’re the one who wants to trap a ghost with a bowling gizmo.”
Tilly grabbed my arms and stepped into the alcove with me. “Don’t look now. He’s here.”
“Who?” I gasped, but I knew who it was. Damn that Boone. Of course he was still looking for me. He looked for dinosaur bones for a living. I should have figured he wouldn’t give up looking for his fiancée. It was time to talk to him. We needed to clear the air, even if we did it in a bowling alley. But on second thought, I was scared to clear the air.
“Hide!” I told Tilly, chickening out.
She rolled her eyes at me. “No way. My knees will never be the same. Get with the program. Hike up your courage. Talk to your man.”
Tilly tugged my arm. She was surprisingly strong for a ninety-year-old woman with sore knees. I fell against her, and the momentum pushed us toward the pin changer. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Boone notice me. His face changed from surprise to hurt to realization that Tilly was falling into the pin changer under my weight.
Boone lunged toward us with his arm outstretched in order to stop Tilly from getting bowled to death. But even Boone with his big muscles, zero body fat, and cat-like reflexes couldn’t get to us in time. Tilly went into the machine, and I fell to the linoleum floor with a crash.
“Holy hell, the girl killed me!” Tilly yelled, more in surprise than terror from the sound of her. That made sense. She probably contemplated her timely demise on a daily basis, but it must have come as a huge shock to find out that I was the one responsible for it.
“Hold on, Tilly, I’ll get you,” Boone cried and ran for the pin changer. Tilly was wedged into the mechanics of the machine, and it was only a matter of seconds before a bowler knocked some pins down and Tilly was deader than a doornail.
“No! You’ll cut your hand off,” I said. “I’ll fix it.”
“I can’t move,” Tilly announced, her voice muffled slightly by the sound of the machinery and Styx music. “This is like a scene out of a horror movie. The machines have taken over. Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to appear any minute now. Take me away, Arnold!”
“We need to get her out of there,” Boone said, looking anxiously at the metal behemoth. Tilly’s body was contorted. Her skinny arms were over her head, and her plump knees were wedged up under her chin.
“I agree with Boone!” Tilly yelled.
“We have to turn it off, first,” I said. Boone looked around for an off switch, but he couldn’t find it. “I’ll do it. I have a doctorate in Bowling Industry Technology.”
“You what?” Boone asked.
It was a common reaction to hearing about my education. “It’s a standard Pierre Pin changer,” I said. “Made in France. It’s better than the new ones, which were designed to handle the coverstock oil absorption rate. But of course it doesn’t, and don’t get me started on static imbalance.”
“Can we speed this up, Professor?” Tilly urged me from inside the machine.
“Sure. This will be done in a jiffy.” I took a bobby pin out of my hair and jammed it in the works of the machine. It ground to a halt instantly.
“I could have done that,” Tilly complained.
“You need the PhD in order to know how to do that,” I said, my feelings hurt.
“Can you get me out of here?” Tilly bellowed. “Or are you planning on leaving me here? You want to get rid of old Tilly, is that it? Young people today. You don’t care if all of us old folks die. I’m the generation before the Greatest Generation, you know. That means I’m greater than the Greater Generation. There’s not a lot of us left. We’re down to your generation. The meh generation. All hail the meh generation. Blech generation, more like.”
“I think she’s asking us to get her out of there,” Boone said to me, smiling. I sucked in air at the sight of his smile. With all of my suspicions about him, I had forgotten just how sexy he was. His hair was thick and messed. His eyes big and piercing. His face all sharp angles and perfect bone structure. And he was looking at me like I was his forever and he couldn’t be happier about it. He took a step closer to me, and I could practically feel his body on mine from last night. It had been our first time together, and it had been off the charts amazing. I didn’t know I could have that many orgasms before last night. I had been Super Orgasm Woman last night. And that was all because of him. Boone was a hard worker in bed.
Boone Goodnight, my fiancé and maybe a serial killer.
I sighed and looked at my feet. I could see Boone’s face drop through the corner of my eye. He turned around and helped Tilly get out of the machine. It took some doing, but she was finally out. She had a couple of scrapes and bruises, but otherwise, she got out of the machine unscathed.
“I was right,” she told me, once she was free. “It would make a great ghost trap.”
“A ghost trap?” Boone asked.
“I’m going to get my wings. Give me your credit card. I’m going to max it out,” Tilly told me. Since I was responsible for her almost getting killed, I gave her my credit card.
“Get me some wings, too,” I said. “And fries.”
Tilly left, but Boone and I stayed behind. I knew it was the moment of reckoning. It was time for me to lay it all out on the line and tell him I suspected him of abducting and murdering girls.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Boone said, taking my hand and caressing it with his thumb.
“I had work to do. Sorry,” I whispered. I couldn’t make eye contact because every time I did, I saw his hurt, puppy dog eyes looking back at me, wondering if everything was all right, wondering if I had gotten cold feet.
“Okay,” he allowed. “You’re not wearing your ring.”
I pulled my hand back. “I gave it to Adele to hold because Mabel was angry that I was stealing her thunder. She and Rocco are getting married, and they’ve got a reality show following them. And I’m going to be the maid of honor. I’ll wear the ring once Mabel calms down.”
Boone nodded. “That makes sense.”
“It does? Even the reality show part?”
He shrugged. “I’ve lived in Goodnight my whole life. I’ve heard crazier. Are we good?”
Are we good? We’re good if you’re not a psycho killer. We’re good if you don’t have a secret dungeon somewhere, filled with terrorized girls. It was time to lay everything out on the line. There was nothing to be scared about. Yes, Boone might cancel our engagement. Yes, he might try to kill me. But I was experienced at heartache, and if he tried to kill me, I could push him into the pin changer machine.
“Yes, we’re good,” I lied, chickening out. Holy crap, I did it again! I was the worst kind of chicken. I was Super Chicken. I was the queen of chickens. I was Lady Chicken from Chickenland.
But I couldn’t keep chickening out. I needed to speed up the investigation into his guilt or innocence behind his back, and I needed to be quick about it because I didn’t know how long I could last without jumping in bed with him again.
“Good,” he said. His face lifted into a wide smile, and he bent over to give me a big kiss. Heaven help me, I kissed him back. My hormones were stronger than my moral compass. In fact, my moral compass was spinning around recklessly, totally unconcerned that my tongue was in the mouth of a maybe murderer. My head spun around with the surge of desire in my body. Boone had some crazy kind of chemical weapon pheromones that completely took me over with a simple kiss.
Not that this was a simple kiss. This was an over the top, Olympic, Nobel Prize kind of kiss. We kissed while the pin changers went through at least five pin changes. When we finally broke the kiss, Boone was breathing hard, and I slumped against his chest. He smelled so good. Even better than BBuffalo wings.
“Okay,” I purred like a cat who’s had a double-dose of catnip and cream.
He pushed away from me gently. “I left some things for you at the house. Little gifts. I hope you enjoy them.”
I was wracked with guilt. How could I suspect this wonderful, loving, generous man? Clues. The clues point to him, Matilda. My chest got tight, and I rubbed it. But I couldn’t bring myself to confront him.
But I could question him about his brother.
“Hey, I was thinking about something,” I said.
“About my shlong? I figured you would,” he said, arching an eyebrow.
I willed myself not to drool. “Not that. I was thinking about Amos’s wife, Amy. Have you noticed that Amos has never really investigated her death?”
Boone’s smile disappeared. “I don’t like talking about Amy.”
“You found her, right?”
“Yes.” It was Boone’s turn to look at his shoes.
“Did Amos and Amy have a good marriage?”
“Where are you going with this?” Boone asked, crossing his arms in front of him. “Listen, Amos is my asshole brother, but he was gaga about Amy, and she was gaga about him. It was a beautiful marriage.” His voice hitched in his throat. “I don’t know why he hasn’t continued to investigate her death. Maybe it’s too hard emotionally. Maybe he doesn’t want to focus on the fact that his soulmate is gone.”
Darn. If Boone was right about his brother, he had moved himself back up to suspect number one.
About an hour later, I was helping Tilly onto the couch at home. “I feel like death,” she said.
“I’ve never seen anyone eat so many wings. You were chewing at fifty miles an hour. You were like a lawnmower for chicken.”
Tilly moaned. “The chicken is fighting back inside me. It’s going three rounds in my gut. Give me my bottle of TUMS so I can knock it back. The bottle is in the top drawer of my dresser.” She pointed at her dresser in the corner of the living room. “Where are my flowers?”
“You mean my flowers? The flowers that Boone left for me and you took?”
“Yes. They were right there. Did you take them?”
There was a wet spot on the dresser where the vase of flowers used to be.
“They’re not here,” I said.
“The ghost,” Tilly breathed and then clutched her belly and moaned. I handed her the bottle of TUMS, and she put four in her mouth. For the first time, I was wondering if a ghost really was wandering around in Goodnight.
Just then, there was a loud scream and a big crash. I jumped in surprise, and so did Tilly. Her bottle of TUMS went flying into the air, sending chewable tablets into every corner of the living room.
“It’s the ghosts! They’re attacking!” Tilly yelled.
“Sonofabitch!” the ghost yelled. But it wasn’t a ghost. I recognized the voice. Silas walked into the living room, clutching a towel around his ample hips. Otherwise, he was naked. “Somebody left a bear trap in the bathroom. Call the cops,” he said.
“Tilly put it in there,” I told him, trying to maintain eye contact in case his towel slipped. “She was trying to catch a ghost.”
“It didn’t work,” Tilly complained. “The bastard stole my flowers.”
“Tilly, you almost killed me,” Silas said.
“Well, watch out for ghost traps. I’ve got them all over this place,” Tilly said and belched. “Oh, thank God I finally got some air out. I’ve got enough gas in me to join OPEC. You two better get out of here while you can.”
Silas and I double-timed it out of the living room. Silas pulled me into the pantry where the dogs were waiting for me, next to their bag of dog food.
“I got to talk to you,” Silas told me.
I scooped food into the dogs’ dishes and gave them fresh water in the kitchen. Silas followed me, still clutching the towel around him.
“I’ve got news,” he said.
I held my breath. “What is it? Boone? Amos? Do you have proof of guilt? Oh, no.”
I slumped down on a kitchen chair. Silas sat across from me and thankfully was careful to keep his knees together. “I wanted to talk to you about the profiler’s report.”
“The one that describes Boone.”
“Yep, that’s the one. I talked to a source today and guess what. Don’t guess. I’ll tell you.”
Chapter 7
“What? What are you going to tell me?” I asked Silas. He had been silent for a couple minutes.
“I was letting the suspense build. It was a dramatic pause.”
“Okay. Are you done with the dramatic pause now?”
Silas threw his hands up. “You ruined the moment. Yes, I’m done. As I was saying, the profiler report. The profiler was fired. It turned out that his profiles were all baloney. Instead of working, he watched porn all day. His computer was full of it.”
“The profiler watched porn?”
“And he made up the reports. No basis in reality. So, they fired him.”
I realized I had been holding my breath, and I sucked in air. “What are you saying? The profiler report is crap?”
“Phony crap. Yes. That’s a point for Boone,” he said.
I could hear the wedding march in my ears. Was I going to get my happy ending?
“This isn’t over, though,” I said. “We need to find the killer.”
“Did you talk to Boone about Amos?”
“He said he had a good marriage.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. There are lots of dead wives from good marriages.”
He was right. I had been in a supposedly good marriage, and I was almost murdered by my husband. Thank goodness he was in prison for the rest of his life. I needed to finalize my divorce so that I could marry Boone, once I proved he was innocent.
I had spent the whole day getting nowhere. I had helped steal a box, which turned out to be empty, and I didn’t broach the subject of my suspicions with Boone. If there were girls needing to be saved, I wasn’t doing them any favors.
Silas assured me he would work on his sources and let me know when they got a new profiler report. Meanwhile, I was going to continue to snoop, even though I feared I had reached a dead end.
Silas went to the bathroom to start his bath, and I went to my bedroom to get undressed. I was pleased and guilt-ridden when I saw that Boone had made the bed after our night of rolling in the sheets. A scent wafted up my nose, and it made me shiver. The smell was familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
That wasn’t the only thing that was off about my bedroom. I turned around in place. Something was wrong. Something wasn’t right. It wasn’t just that Boone made the bed. Everything seemed just an inch out of place. I couldn’t imagine Boone going through my room, moving all of my belongings. Maybe it was my imagination. Maybe nothing was wrong.
I gasped.
Maybe it was a ghost.
Not that I believed in ghosts; although I did believe in dead people talking to me in the forest. Were they ghosts? I guess they were. But my experience with ghosts was purely conversational. I never had one stealing flowers and potatoes and moving my knick-knacks around.
A couple of hours later, Tilly was finally asleep after consuming half a bottle of milk of magnesia. Silas had taken his bath and had gone home. The dogs were asleep on my bed. My teeth were brushed, my face washed, and I had slipped on a pair of pajamas.
I got in bed and pulled the blankets up to my chin. I closed my eyes and did every trick I had been taught to fall asleep. But nope. I couldn’t fall asleep.
Abbott lifted his head and looked at me, expectantly. “I’m not going out there again,” I told him. “I’m going to sleep like a normal person.”
He crawled forward and nudged me with his nose.
Although, maybe it was a good idea to take the dogs for a walk. If I did go into the forest, maybe Amy would appear again and
tell me who her killer was. Why did these dead people talk in riddles? Why couldn’t they just come out and tell me who the serial killer was and where the girls were being held? It was frustrating and a big time suck.
“Fine. Let’s go,” I told Abbott. He jumped off the bed and wagged his tail at me. Costello opened one eye, sleepily. Where I never slept, the black lab always slept. But he was a generous, kind soul, and he never complained about our middle-of-the-night walks.
We left the house, careful to avoid the bucket of water ghost trap over the door that Tilly had set up. Once we were in the forest behind the house, Abbott ran ahead, howling. Costello stayed by my side as we walked along slowly, guided by the light of my flashlight.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched in the forest, but we walked a long time and I wasn’t bothered by any people, dead or alive. The air was fresh and crisp, and the sky was full of stars. I felt lucky that I got to live in Goodnight in my rundown, historic home with two dogs and an almost-centenarian and with my newspaper and assorted cast of characters.
By the time we returned home about an hour later, I felt more optimistic about my future. I now believed that I would find the serial killer, save the girls, and walk down the aisle with the man I loved. All of my problems had seemed to wash away in the fresh air and were replaced with a sense of optimism.
During my shower the next morning, I remembered that my car was at Nora’s house. If I was going to snoop around town, I would need to pick it up. After I fed the dogs, I went to the Gazette office. Klee gave me the stink eye because I wasn’t pulling my weight on the smaller stories. Tilly had recovered and was writing her Ask Annie column. Silas winked at me when I entered. Jack was gathering his reporter’s notebook.
“I’m going to cover the town hall meeting on the ghosts,” Jack told me.
“I’ll walk with you. I have to pick up my car at Nora’s.” We walked outside and started down the long driveway. “Have you heard from Amos lately?” I asked. I had no shame. If I couldn’t get information out of Amos or Boone, I would try to get it out of their kid cousin.