Ghost Busting Mystery Read online

  Harry looked confused about Jedidiah Wyatt and the geography of southern Indiana. “Jedidiah built the First National Bank of Knobby Waters, Indiana?”

  “Heck no,” I corrected him. “The First National was the second bank in Knobby Waters. The Apple family founded that one long about 1910. The Apple’s bank was the second bank in town, but it made it through all the crashes and bank failures because Silas Apple was so tight he could squeeze a buffalo nickel until the buffalo pooped.”

  Veenie was nodding along. She looked at Harry. “Didn’t they teach you any Indiana history up there in the big city of South Bend?”

  “Oh geez,” said Harry, “guess I missed the chapter on the founding of Knobby Waters.”

  Veenie stuck her false teeth out at Harry.

  “Oh for Pete’s sake, stop it you two,” I said. “I ain’t got time to babysit.”

  Harry asked me what happened to the Wyatts and their bank.

  “Well,” I continued, “the bank and old man Wyatt were long gone before I was born. Bank failed long about 1920. Jedidiah Wyatt claimed the flood of 1919, worst the town ever seen, ruined all the crops and swept away the livestock. All his loans were to farmers. Once the collateral got swept away Jedidiah bolted the bank doors and rowed out of town. When the town folks blew open the safe hoping to get their savings back, the only things in there were an empty whiskey jug, nudie photos, and a note that read, ‘Adios, folks.’”

  Harry looked dubious. “He just up and left his bank? His house? Weren’t they worth something?”

  “Turned out the Wyatt mansion, a big old brick Victorian with turrets, thirteen rooms, one of them an indoor bathroom with a blue marble john imported all the way from Italy, was owned full out by some railroad bank and trust down in Louisville. The bank building had been mortgaged too. All Jedidiah left behind was a mountain of bad debt.”

  “And his young wife,” added Veenie. “Jedidiah was a bachelor until he hit seventy. My pappy told me he’d just married one of those cross-eyed Ollis girls, probably for the dowry. Don’t think anyone ever married an Ollis unless they got paid to do it. I know I wouldn’t.”

  Harry petted the end of his moustache. “She related to the Ollises who live out on the brick plant hill road today?”

  “Might be,” I said.

  Harry seemed to be softening up.

  “We can take Dode’s case? You approve?”

  “I wouldn’t go so far as to use the word ‘approve,’ but we are low on cash right now.”

  “Low?” screeched Veenie. “RJ and I are holding our paychecks. Last week we barely made hot dog money.”

  Harry stood up and headed toward the door. The detective agency was in an old Rexall drugstore, and Harry lived upstairs in a bachelor apartment, so if he truly wanted to get away from us, he had to scoot out of the office for the day. “Fine. You two take this one. Good training for you. It’s lunchtime. I’m headed over to Pokey’s to drum up business.”

  Pokey’s was the tavern and pool hall. They served a light lunch. The best things on the menu were their cheesy mystery meat sandwiches and cheap tap beer: Schlitz or Pabst Blue Ribbon. And, oh yeah, their greasy fat onion rings. Men hung out there, mostly playing cards and hiding from their wives. Veenie enjoyed their take-out. Women weren’t all that welcome to hang inside unless they were Jezebels, or hard-drinkers, preferably both. On occasion Veenie had called in a late night order of onion rings and a cheesy mystery meat sandwich or two. Pokey’s was the only place in town besides the Go Go Gas that was open past midnight.

  As soon as Harry was gone, Veenie and I figured out how to pop open one of the money jars. It had been plugged with cork and wax-coated newspaper. The corkscrew on my Swiss Army knife did the trick right nice.

  I’d never seen Veenie so excited about a case. She wasn’t too happy about the smell that came out of the jars though. “Smells like the cab of Pappy’s truck when he used to go fishing in July. He’d toss the catfish in the cab and forget about them for a day or two.”

  “Worse,” I said as I teetered backward, slapped in the face by the smell. I got a jug of vinegar, a bucket, and a little scrub brush from the broom closet, so we could launder the cash.

  The top opening on the jug was only about an inch wide. “How we going to get the cash out?” asked Veenie, who, being impulsive, already had her plump fingers stuck in the opening.

  “Bust the jar, I reckon.”

  I dug around in my desk until I found a ball peen hammer. I swung at the jar and it cracked. Water and coins rushed out onto the wood floor. The mess puddled across Veenie’s feet like a slimy green tongue.

  “Good thing I’m wearing my water-resistant Wonder Woman Crocs,” said Veenie.

  Wonder Woman squished over to the broom closet to get the dust pan and broom to sweep up the cash.

  We sat at our desks sorting the loot in heaps by denomination. That task took most of the afternoon. We came up with about nine hundred dollars from the first jar, which was enough to make the retainer.

  I eyed Veenie. “You want to take this to the bank tomorrow?”

  “Sure.”

  I could tell by the gleam in her eyes—they shone like blue fireflies—that she couldn’t wait to annoy uptight Avonelle Apple by dumping a load of corroded green coins onto the bank’s spotless marble countertops. Avonelle was President of the First National Bank of Knobby Waters, and Veenie’s lifelong enemy. They’d been throwing hissy fits with each other for fifty years—a long story that involving a rigged cat judging contest at the Pawpaw County Fair.

  The cash cleaned and counted and safely stashed away in double plastic bags from the Hoosier Feedbag, we locked up the office. Veenie and I headed home, feeling mighty proud that we’d landed a new case. Veenie chattered like a chipmunk all the way home in the Impala. We co-owned the ’60 Impala, so I had no choice but to let her ride shotgun. Her bad eyesight had caused her to lose her legal license. It was up to me to chauffer us both around.

  “I’m running to the Goodwill first thing in the morning,” said Veenie. “Need me some new ghost busting attire.”

  Personally, I couldn’t wait to see what she came up with.

  Chapter Three

  A herd of stray cats streamed across the gravel road in front of Dode Schneider’s farmhouse. They had their tails raised high, like furry rudders. They moved like they knew where they were headed. Must have been two dozen of them. A couple of skinny momma cats batted kittens along. The herd made a beeline toward the Wyatt mansion.

  The old Wyatt mansion was a Victorian with towers on each end. Gray slate shingles shone like scaly snake skin on the steep roof. The mansion sat on a hill just outside of town on the twisty, roller-coaster road up the knobs. Slapped together of crumbling red brick from the local brick plant, the house was covered in vines that refused to green up regardless of the season. It looked like the kind of place I’d hang out if I were a ghost, or if I were hiding from the law.

  We turned down a rutted dirt path. The Chevy humped along until we reached the turn onto Dode’s farm. Apparently Dode didn’t believe in mowing his yard. The weeds slapped the bottom of the car as we bumped along. I pulled in beside Dode’s red, short-bed Ford.

  Dode’s farmhouse was a simple place. A story and a half, white frame house with a curved porch that hugged the front entrance like a set of welcoming arms. A curtain of tangled blue morning glories half hid the porch, but not the section to the right of the front door, where a line of rocking chairs sat in the shade.

  Dode sat in the rocker closet to the door, a rifle laid across his knees. He was dressed in his customary long-sleeved flannel shirt and bib overalls. He raised one hand and waved at us with the rifle. “Them there ghosts are still there.” He pointed the rifle toward the apple orchard across the way that ran along the far side of the Wyatt mansion. “I was up all night keeping an eye on them for you.”

  Veenie bounced out of the car, eager to get started. She’d scared up a ghost busting outfit at the
Goodwill. I was wearing blue jeans and a red camp shirt with flowered canvas sneakers. I looked like a normal old lady headed out to shop at the Wal-Mart. Veenie, who was wearing a white pest-control jumpsuit, a red Indiana University football helmet, and a munitions belt, looked more like she was headed for trouble. Veenie’s drab-green military belt was loaded with gadgets. Her BB pistol was stuffed into the belt. She jingled when she walked. She had two tubes of BBs stuck in her belt. I wasn’t asking about any of this.

  Dode leaned his rifle up against the house and gave us both hearty handshakes. “Made us a pitcher of cold well water,” he said. “Go ahead. Have you some.”

  Veenie pulled a Boy Scout’s tin cup out of her munition belt. She flipped up the mouth guard on her helmet and knocked back some water. I made like a little old lady and sipped on one of the Ball jars Dode offered me.

  Dode asked Veenie if she was the ghost buster.

  “Yep. First official case. I watched some tapes on YouTube. Ghosts aren’t all that smart. Ought to have this wrapped up in no time.”

  Dode’s eyes widened. “Ghosts are dim-witted? I imagined them to be smart puppies.”

  “They’re just like us. They was us, but then they got stuck trying to leave their bodies. We just have to help them along.”

  I had to ask. “Where did you learn that?”

  “I figured it out. When you die, there’s that tunnel.”

  Dode leaned forward, all ears. “The one with the big light?”

  “Yeah, if you’re lucky. You gotta head toward that light fast. Some folks get confused and miss the tunnel.”

  “Confused? About what?” Dode asked.

  “Well, they’ve lost their arms and legs and they are a’flying all over the place. Probably sputter around a good bit, like firecrackers. So they miss the tunnel and then they have to wait for another light to swing by and pick them up. Probably takes a couple of passes before they get comfortably climbed on board.”

  Dode nodded thoughtfully. “You think these here ghosts are friendly.”

  “Probably. Probably just confused. They need us to tell them where to go.”

  I was listening. All this sounded both harebrained and quite reasonable to me, like most of what Veenie concocted in her head. The two of us had been best pals since the sixties when we ran adjacent plastic molding machines at the Bold Mold factory, so pretty much nothing she said or did fazed me.

  Veenie pulled out a notebook and a stubby yellow pencil from one of the large side pockets on her pest-control jumpsuit. The notebook had unicorns on it. The stubby pencil was a county fair freebie from Skinny Davis’s hardware store, which had gone out of business back in 1963. “I have to ask you some questions before we map the whole dang place for electrical disturbances. You have any reason to believe these ghosts might be demons?”

  “Demons?” Dode scooped up some chaw from a tin and tucked it in one cheek. Brown juice trickled down his chin. He wiped it on the back of his hand. His Adam’s apple bobbled up and down, taking his tight collar for a ride.

  “Have they threatened you? Tried to push you down the stairs?” Veenie, who was in Dragnet mode, was taking notes like a pro.

  “Oh gosh darn, no. They mind their own business, mostly. Once or twiced they flashed their big asses this way. That scared me. But no, they ain’t tried anything mean-spirited.”

  “That’s good, because sometimes ghosts aren’t lost. They know where they are. And they know where they are headed. They drag their ghost tails on this side of eternity for a good reason. Anyone ever murdered or tortured over at that mansion?”

  “Gosh darn, no. Don’t think so. That place has been empty long as I can remember. Our mama never let us go in that place. Said it was bad luck. Said it was evil, what with old Jedidiah stealing the town blind and abandoning his own newborn kin. Mama always said old Wyatt was a devil, and if we ever went in that place, we’d come back out with the devil burning inside us.”

  What Dode said rang true. Everybody in town was scared of that old house—too scared to even vandalize the place. As far as everyone in town was concerned, the place wasn’t just haunted. It was cursed.

  Veenie snapped shut her notebook. “Well, don’t you worry your head none. Me and RJ, we’ll get to the bottom of this. We’re not afraid of no ghosts, are we RJ?”

  “Heck no.” I hoped I sounded convincing. We’d already deposited the retainer. Now that Veenie had mentioned demons I was feeling more cautious. I’d seen The Exorcist. No way I wanted my head to spin around. My arthritis was bad enough without some big-butted demon twisting on my neck.

  Veenie stood up and straightened her munitions belt. She looked like General Patton headed into battle. “Those apple trees there, those where the ghosts hang?”

  “Yep. Right in the middle. They swing back and forth. They clack a bit too.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Clack?”

  “Yeah, like maybe they have chains they are swinging. Don’t ghosts have chains?”

  I looked at Veenie.

  “Sure. Some of them do. You ever see them ghosts in the daytime? Anyone else ever go into that house?”

  “Nope. The ghosts only come out and hang at night. No one goes in or out over there. Saw what looked to be a fancy-pants county assessor take a peak on the outside yesterday. He just shook his head. Got in his car and drove away. Cats love the place. Other than that, it’s a ghost house, for sure.”

  “Ready, Ruby Jane?” Veenie asked as she tightened her belt.

  “I reckon,” I said. “You being a pro and all, I’ll just follow your lead.”

  “We’ll start out in the orchard. We can check around the yard for open graves. People used to bury their kinfolk in the yard, right alongside the family pets. We got to be on the lookout for stuff like that.”

  I wasn’t going to ask what “stuff like that” meant. I figured I’d find out soon enough. Veenie had a tiny folding shovel strapped to her belt. I figured if we found any suspicious holes, I could roll Veenie down into them. She was smaller and rounder than me; nosier too. I could tie a rope around her, yank her back out if need be.

  Veenie bounced in front of me and headed across the yard, her red football helmet barely visible over the tall weeds and goldenrod. For an old lady with a heart condition, she rolled at a remarkable pace.

  We burst out of the weeds into a mossy area under the apple trees. Veenie had taken a small black electrical box out of a holster on her munitions belt. The box had a dial. It made a crackling sound like a bad electrical wire. It looked like the thing electricians used to check voltage on electrical boxes. “What in tarnation is that?”

  “EMF detector.” She scanned the meter across tree trunks. The orchard boasted about twenty gnarled apple trees, most of them scaly with lichen. It was still Spring so while the leaves were out the trees hadn’t fully budded yet.

  “What’s that contraption do?”

  “Detects electrical impulses. That’s how you tell if you have ghosts sneaking around. They leave electrical waves. Like how a snail leaves a trail of slime. It’s called ectoplasm. Looks like green slime at nighttime. Didn’t you ever watch Ghostbusters?”

  “That contraption you got looks like an ordinary voltage meter to me.”

  “Best I could do on a budget. I asked Harry to get us a real EMF meter, but they cost five hundred dollars.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Stop pestering me.”

  We spent a couple of hours poking around in the apple trees. Other than the fact the orchard needed a good pruning, everything looked normal. The trees closest to the house had thin, blackened branches that looked like skeleton fingers to me. A few leaves had budded out. They looked like sharp, green fingernails. “Got anything yet,” I asked Veenie as we made our way toward the house. I was getting hot and hungry. I’d made us a picnic lunch. It was wadded up in the bottom of my messenger bag. Boiled eggs. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. A liter of Big Red on an ice pack for the both of us.


  Veenie stopped scanning tree trunks and blew her nose. The ragweed pollen was getting to her. “Got nothing yet, but that don’t mean a thing. Ghosts are sneaky like that. Probably cleaning up after themselves.”

  The horse flies were out now. And they were lunching on my neck. I swatted a couple. “You hungry?”

  Veenie plopped down on the moss under a tree. We made quick work of our lunch while plotting our next move. While Veenie had been scanning trees, I’d been kicking around in the weeds. Nothing too suspicious. A few badass gopher holes smack in the middle of the orchard. Prime gopher territory. Apples fell off the trees and rolled right straight into their little underground kitchens. There was a pile of old tin and boards heaped up close to the house, but I wasn’t up to digging around in that. That hot pile of tin looked like it might be home to some copperhead snakes if ever I saw one. It looked to me that the weeds leading up to the house were downtrodden. The weeds lay down into a narrow path about the size of a cow path or a deer trail. The trail seemed to lead up to the back porch door of the mansion.

  I pointed out the grass trail to Veenie as we packed up the wax paper and napkins from our lunch. “You reckon that’s a ghost trail?”

  Veenie shook her head no. “Ghosts don’t have no feet. They float.” She drew out her BB pistol and poured in some ammo. She rattled the gun for good measure.

  “Cats? Deer?” I asked. Deer loved crab apples. There weren’t any apples on the trees yet, but the deer weren’t fussy. They gnawed the sweet limb tips just the same.

  “Could be.”

  I eyed the back door to the Wyatt mansion. The window was busted out but solidly boarded over. My eyes traveled across the back porch. Vines held the gray, weathered house in a stranglehold. Lots of things could be living in that house. Even more could have died there. No one had nosed around in that house for a hundred years, and personally I could see why. “You game?” I asked Veenie as I swallowed the last of my Big Red pop.